An empirical analysis of the effect of the aggravatedmale employment environment on female marriage
behavior in Japan
Shoichi Sasaki
December 2014
Discussion Paper No.1430

GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
KOBE UNIVERSITYROKKO, KOBE, JAPANAn empirical analysis of the effect of the aggravated male employment
environment on female marriage behavior in Japan
Shoichi SasakiGraduate School of Economics, Kobe University

This version: December 2014

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the effect of the aggravated male employment environment on female
marriage behavior in Japan. Using extensive individual data from Japan’s Employment Status
Survey, I conduct an empirical analysis on the effect of increase in the male irregular
employee rate, in terms of designation, on the single-female rate. The results show that
decreasing male regular employment rate and increasing male irregular employment rate
have significant positive effects on the rising single-female rate. The effect persists evenwhen the mean of the distribution of male wage is controlled for. Furthermore, the increasingin the male irregular employment rate, regardless of the employment contract period, also hasa significant positive effect on the rising single-female rate. These results suggest that thecharacteristics of Japan’s dual labor market affect female marriage behavior. Thus, policies
that can improve the income security of low-income males and promote a shift from irregular
to regular employment are likely to raise the female marriage rate.
Key words: declining male labor market, dual labor market, irregular employment, female
marriage behavior
JEL classification: J1; J3

I would like to thank Kazufumi Yugami, Naoki Mitani, Yasuhide Tanaka, and seminar
participants at Kobe University for their helpful suggestions and comments. I also thank the
Kobe University Micro-data Archive (KUMA) for the Employment Status Survey data
provided.

Corresponding author; Shoichi Sasaki; Research Fellow, Graduate School of Economics,
Kobe University; 1-8-13, Maikodai, Tarumiku Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture, Postcode
655-0046; Email: ichi2sun@fancy.ocn.ne.jp

1. Introduction
This paper examines the effect of the aggravated male employment environment on
female marriage behavior in Japan. I focus, in particular, on the effects of a decrease in themale regular employee rate and an increase in the male irregular employee rate on the
single-female rate.
In recent years, the relationship between the tendency among Japanese females toremain single or delay marriage and the worsening male employment environment in Japan
has attracted social interest. Various studies note that the number of marriageable men has
been decreasing with a growing number of men earning lower incomes due to the declining
male labor market in the United States (Blau, Kahn, and Waldforgel 2000, Brien 1997,
Lichter et al. 1992, and Wood 1995).
Additionally, Oppenheimer, Kalmijin, and Lim (1997) argue that career-entry
uncertainties lead to delayed marriage. In other words, those employed in stopgap jobs areless likely to marry than those with permanent jobs, because the stopgap arrangement implies
career immaturity, uncertainty about the young person’s long-term prospects, and a declining
labor market.
On the other hand, Japan’s dual labor market is built solidly. If a person of theyounger generation gets an irregular job after graduation, a subsequent transition to regular
employment is very difficult because of the low fluidity in the employment market. Thus,
irregular employees are forced to accept not just a lower lifetime wage but also unstable
employment compared to regular employees (Genda 1997, Ohta and Genda 2007, and Ohta,
Genda, and Kondo 2007).
The terms “regular employment” and “irregular employment” are listed as“Designation” in Japan’s Employment Status Survey. This classification method is peculiar to
Japan. The United States and most European countries do not classify employment status inthis manner. In addition, the Survey also classifies employees’ positions according to theiremployment agreements.
Following the classifications adopted in the Employment Status Survey, I classify
male employment positions into four categories: male regular employment without a definite
term, male regular employment with a definite term, male irregular employment without adefinite term, and male irregular employment with a definite term. Therefore, male irregular
employment is classified into two categories: male irregular employment without a definite
term and male irregular employment with a definite term.
In Japan, the number of irregular employees without a definite term have increased inrecent years (Kambayashi 2010a). It is recognized that irregular employment without adefinite term is often renewed many times, so that the actual duration of service is relatively
long (Koyo̅ no Arikata ni Kansuru Kenkyukai [Meeting to Study Systems of Employment]2009).

As Japanese companies determine employees’ plans for capability development andtheir wage profiles using designations, some studies claim that designations rather than theterm of employment have a larger impact on the labor condition or lifetime wage
(Kambayashi 2013, Kambayashi and Kato 2012, and Kawaguchi, Kambayashi, and Hara2011). Additionally, several researchers argue that the tendency among young females toremain single or delay marriage is related to the increasing male irregular employment rate
(Nagase 2002, Ohta 2007, and Sakai and Higuchi 2005).
In fact, since the 1990s, the singlehood rate among Japanese women aged 25–44 years
and the irregular employment rate among Japanese men of the same age group have risen
simultaneously (Figure 1), thus lending support to the notion that some kind of positive
relationship exists between these phenomena.

Fig.1. Trends of single-female rate and male irregular employment rate.
Therefore, it would be useful to examine the relationship between Japan’s rising
single-female rate and the aggravated male employment environment, and clarify whether
young women tend to remain single or delay marriage depending on the irregular
employment rate among Japanese men.
The outline of this paper is as follows. Section 2 presents the hypotheses and theestimation model. Section 3 describes the data. Section 4 reports the estimation results anddiscusses them, and Section 5 concludes the paper.
2. Hypotheses and estimation model
Conventionally, the mainstream economic approach to the predominant female
behavior of remaining single or delaying marriage is a cost-benefit analysis founded on
Becker (1973).1
On the other hand, recent studies in the United States examine the relationshipbetween macroeconomic factors such as the decreasing number of marriageable men and the1

Oppenheimer (1997) suggests that the specialization model based on marriage gain isessentially an argument for nonmarriage, not delayed marriage.

situation in the male labor market. Although most previous studies define marriageable men
as “full-time employees,” in this paper, I employ the terms “regular employees” and“irregular employees,” as they characterize the dual labor market in Japan. Specifically, I
analyze the effects of the employment indices, such as the regular employment rate, irregular
employment rate, and unemployment rate, on the single-female rate, using anonymous
Japanese individual data from the Employment Status Survey. The hypotheses are that thedecreasing standard employment rate and the increasing irregular employment andunemployment rates raise the single-female rate.
Furthermore, I add the mean of the male wage in the marriage market to control thechange of the male whole wage distribution.
I examine the abovementioned hypotheses using marginal effects of a probit model inwhich the dependent variable 𝑦𝑖 is the marriage status of the female (single or married). The
estimation model is shown in (1):𝑦𝑖∗ = 𝑥𝑖 𝛼 + 𝐼𝛽 + 𝑀𝛾 + 𝜀𝑖𝑦𝑖 = 1

𝑖𝑓 𝑦𝑖∗ > 0, and 0 otherwise(1)

where 𝑖 represents the 𝑖th female.
The explanatory variables are female individual attributes 𝑥𝑖 , such as age group andeducation background, and male wage inequality indices or labor market condition indices I,
such as the male regular employment rate, male irregular employment rate, and male
unemployed rate in the marriage market for females. I also use the control variable 𝑀, suchas the mean of the male wage, sex ratio, and female habitation dummy variable in large urban
areas, as the proxy variable for the marriage market,2,3 and 𝜀𝑖 is the error term. The sex ratiois the male-to-female ratio in the marriage market by age group and year.
3. DataIn this paper, I use official Japanese statistics (anonymous individual data) from the
Employment Status Survey for 1992, 1997, and 2002,4 obtained from the Kobe University
Micro-data Archive, Japan.
Considering that the data are anonymous, information on prefectures and households
2

However, some previous studies include other employment conditions such as female
regular employment, irregular employment, and unemployment as explanatory variables. I do
not consider these variables in this paper, because many females retire or change their status
to irregular employment on marriage or childbirth, causing endogeneity between theemployment condition and marriage behavior. For the same reason, I exclude female wage as
an explanatory variable.
3
I do not include the year dummy variable because the regular and irregular employment
rates and the year dummy show a certain amount of correlation (correlation coefficient =0.5-0.7).
4
Currently, data are available for these three years only.

with more than nine members is kept secret, and age and wage information are indicated not
as actual numbers but as class values, to avoid identification of an individual or household.
However, I use resampled data, which comprise 80% of the entire sample. Thus, the sample
size is approximately 2,370,000 over three years.
In this paper, I restrict the sample to females aged 25–44 years, because women
younger than 25 years include students. Further, as described in Figure 2, the single-female
rate in the female age group of 20–24 years has not changed much during the period understudy (about 87%), while approximately 90% of women are married by age 44.5 The final
sample for the analysis includes 367,690 women.

Fig.2. Trends of single-female rate in each 5-year age group.
I assume that potential marriage partners are males of the same age group and year. I
do not assume marriage market segmentation by educational background.6
In this paper, I use an hourly rather than a yearly wage because of the cyclical changes
in labor supply influences. I calculate the male employment indices, logarithm mean wage,

5

Because the 2002 questionnaire does not distinguish between divorcees or widows andsingle women, it must be noted that the single-female rate for 2002 (unlike those for the otheryears) includes divorcees and widows.
6
I assume that the women’s potential marriage partners belong to the same 5-year age group
because the mean age difference between men and women at first marriage was 2.6 years in
1992, 2.4 years in 1997, and 1.7 years in 2002. This gap has been gradually reducing,according to the Japanese National Fertility Survey. This is the largest statistical survey on
the consciousness and marriage behavior of single Japanese persons and is conducted by the
National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. In addition, I also assume,
following Gould and Paserman (2003), that potential marriage partners may be from any
educational background, because changes in male wage distribution may affect female
education choice.

and sex ratio in the marriage market for each age group and year.7
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the variables used in this analysis.
Table 1: The descriptive statistics of the variable
Variable

Women of ages 25–44 years
Obs.

Mean

Std.

Min.

Max.

Dev.
Female age-

25–29 years old

367690

0.238

0.426

0

1

group

30–34 years old

367690

0.235

0.424

0

1

dummy

35–39 years old

367690

0.243

0.429

0

1

40–44 years old

367690

0.283

0.451

0

1

FemaleBelow junior high graduate

367690

0.075

0.264

0

1

education

High school graduate

367690

0.539

0.498

0

1

background

Graduate from vocational school

367690

0.272

0.445

0

1

Above college graduate

367690

0.110

0.313

0

1

Female single probability

367690

0.219

0.414

0

1

Male logarithmic mean wage in marriage market

367690

7.452

0.177

7.128

7.735

Male

Regular employment rate (%)

36769096.2382.626

88.65098.270employment

Irregular employment rate (%)

367690

3.762

2.626

1.730

11.350condition in

Permanent employment rate (%)

36769090.4893.415

81.62694.202marriage

Temporary employment rate (%)

367690

5.069

1.352

3.588

8.503

Unemployment rate (%)

367690

4.369

2.146

2.185

9.678

Sex ratio in marriage market

36769090.8272.414

88.602

94.486

Female habitation dummy in large urban areas

367690

0.322

0.467

0

1

1992

367690

0.372

0.483

0

1

1997

367690

0.331

0.471

0

1

2002

367690

0.297

0.457

0

1

dummy

marketYear dummy

Note: The regular/non-regular employment rate is the ratio of regular/non-regular employees to all employees.

7

I use the median of each wage grade as the personal wage and multiply it by 1.4 for thehigh-end yearly wage group (income exceeding 10 million yen). Furthermore, the real wage
is based on the 2002 consumer price index. From 2002, however, each wage group in the
Employment Status Survey questionnaire is further divided into yet more subgroups.
Therefore, I standardize the wage groups according to those of 1992 and 1997, following
Shinozaki (2001) and Kambayashi (2010b), to remove the influence of class interval changeon the setup of the mean wage. In addition, following Ohta (2007), I define the irregular
employment rate in terms of all employees, and the unemployment rate, as a proportion of the
population.

4. Estimation results and discussion
Table 2 shows the estimation results of the marginal effects of the selected male
employment condition indices. As stated previously, I use the male regular employment rate,
male irregular employment rate, and male unemployment rate.
Table 2: Marginal effects of various male employment indices
Male employment condition indices
Regular

Irregular

Unemployment

Employment rate

Employment rate

Rate

Male employment-0.0110.024-0.030Condition indices(0.003)***(0.007)***(0.007)***

Number of obs.

367690367690367690Pseudo R2

0.154

0.157

0.160

Notes:
1. Men in the marriage market are considered with controls for age group, year dummy.
2. Dependent variable: single female = 1, others = 0.
3. Other explanatory variables are female education background dummy, female age-group dummy, sex ratio in marriage
market, and female habitation dummy in large urban areas.
4. Within the second-step parentheses are standard errors modified by clustering based on age group, education background,and year dummy.
5. ***, **, and * indicate 1%, 5%, and 10% levels of significance, respectively.

The coefficient of the regular employment rate has a significant negative effect at the
1% level for single-female probability.8 Moreover, the coefficients of the male irregular
employment rate and male unemployment rate have significant positive effects at the 1%
level for single-female probability. Thus, the results are consistent with the hypotheses.9
Among the control variables, the dummies for being educated beyond college and forfemale habitation in large urban areas have significant positive effects at the 1% level.
I repeat the estimations by controlling for the mean wage. If the dispersion of the malewage distribution does not spread, the increase of the male mean wage indicates the increasein the number of marriageable men, and thus, the increase of the male mean wage is expected
to decrease the single-female rate. Columns 1, 2, and 3 of Table 3 show the estimation results
for the selected male employment condition indices when the male mean wage is controlled
8

The coefficient of single-female probability refers to the marginal increase in percentage
points of single females when each variable increases by 1%.
9
According to Gould and Paserman (2003), when a large number of single men tend to be
low-income irregular employees, an increase in the number of single men decreases the malemean wage. To control for this reverse causality, I estimate the model using only data on
married males and obtain results similar to those of Table 2.

for. The coefficients of the male mean wage do not have significant effects in all cases, but
the signs of the coefficients are negative in more than half the cases. Therefore, the results are
consistent with the hypotheses. Conversely, the coefficients of the regular employment rate,
irregular employment rate, and unemployment rate have similar significant positive effects at
the 1% level for single-female probability even after the male mean wage is controlled.
Table 3: Marginal effects of various male employment indices by controlling for mean wage
Male employment condition indices
Regular

Irregular

Unemployment

Regular

Irregular

Employmen

Employment

Rate

Employment

Employmentt raterate

Without aWith aDefinite term

Definite term

Male employment-0.001

0.025

0.029

0.048

0.051

Condition indices(0.004)***(0.008)***(0.007)***(0.015)***(0.017)***

Male mean wage

-0.0580.037-0.0330.073-0.007(0.234)(0.156)(0.119)(0.154)(0.158)

Number of obs.

367690367690367690367690367690Pseudo R2

0.152

0.157

0.160

0.158

0.156

Notes:
1. Men in the marriage market are considered with controls for age group, year dummy.
2. Dependent variable: single female = 1, others = 0.
3. Other explanatory variables are female education background dummy, female age-group dummy, sex ratio in marriage
market, and female habitation dummy in large urban areas.
4. Within the second-step parentheses are standard errors modified by clustering based on age group, education background,and year dummy.
5. ***, **, and * indicate 1%, 5%, and 10% levels of significance, respectively.

How can this result be interpreted? The reduction in the male regular employment rate
and the rise in the male irregular employment rate decrease the male mean wage, whichmight, in turn, be related to a certain point in time. As Oppenheimer (1997) notes, anemployment condition index, such as the male irregular employment rate, may capture themale lifetime wage due to career immaturity and uncertainty.
Then, do increased male irregular employment rates without or with definite terms
exert different effects on the single-female rate? Columns 4 and 5 in Table 3 present theestimation results using the indices. Both indices have a significant positive effect at the 1%
level on the single-female rate. Therefore, even if the employment agreement mentions no
definite term, the rise in the male irregular employment rate has a significant positive effect.
In other words, it is possible that females easily perceive the decrease in the rate ofmarriageable men due to the increase in the rate of irregular male employees, because theiremployment statuses, conveyed by their designations after graduation, determine their
lifetime wages and job stability. 10 Additionally, the marginal effect of increasing maleirregular employment without a definite term, which has risen in recent years, is as large asthat of male irregular employment with a definite term. Thus, it is probable that thisincreasing male irregular employment without a definite term will increase the single-femalerate.
5. Conclusion
It is crucial to identify why young Japanese women tend to remain single or delay
marriage. Some studies empirically examine the relationship between the aggravated male
employment environment and female marriage behavior in the United States. However, there
is no such in-depth study in the Japanese context. Therefore, using extensive individual-level
data from the Japan’s Employment Status Survey, this paper empirically examined the effectof changes in male employment statuses, in terms of their designations, on the single-femalerate.
The results show that when female education background, age group, sex ratio, andmale mean wage are controlled for, the decreasing male regular employment rate and theincreasing male irregular employment and male unemployment rates have a significant
positive effect on the single-female rate. Thus, the results are consistent with the hypotheses.
Furthermore, the increase in the irregular employment rate, regardless of the employment
contract period, has a significant effect on the rising single-female rate.
These results can be interpreted in that Japanese women easily perceive the change inthe rate of marriageable men in the marriage market by the composition of male employment
statuses in terms of their designations. Furthermore, it is possible that the characteristics ofJapan’s dual labor market affect female marriage behavior seriously.
The results of this empirical analysis suggest the following policy implications. It isnecessary to raise the male whole wage level and support a shift from irregular employment
to regular employment by improving the labor market environment. These steps would help
increase the female marriage rate in Japan.
To this end, the Japanese government should not only encourage companies toestablish systems those help employers evaluate employees’ capability accurately, but itshould also promote employees’ capability development programs and employee training.
Improving income security is an additional requirement. However, the conditions and10

According to the Japanese National Fertility Survey, the percentage of women who stated“I plan to marry in the future” increased slightly from 91.06% in 1992 to 92.53% in 2002.
Thus, it is reasonable to say that the rise in female-single rate is not caused by a declining
preference to marriage among Japanese women.

requirements are likely to differ for permanent versus temporary irregular employees. Thus,
the implemented remedial measures should be appropriate to each category.
A future challenge is to accumulate substantial data to examine how these influences
have affected and continue to affect the so-called lost-decade generation born in the 1980s,
which faces job scarcity.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Kazufumi Yugami, Naoki Mitani, Yasuhide Tanaka, and seminar
participants at the Kobe University for their helpful suggestions and comments. I also thankthe Kobe University Micro-data Archive (KUMA) for the Employment Status Survey data
provided by them.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest to declare.
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