doi: 10.1111/aepr.12202

Asian Economic Policy Review (2018) 13, 68–101

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?
Nobuko NAGASE†
Ochanomizu University

The present paper estimates the effect of the Abe Cabinet’s Womanomics policies that aimed toincrease female labor supply and keep women on a career path. The policies are surveyed, andthe effects are estimated using microdata from the Labor Force Survey combined with data at theprefectural level on day care provision. A difference-in-difference (DD) method is applied touncover the impacts of the Abe Cabinet’s policies. The rapid increase in the provision of infantcare, especially in the urban area, has contributed to a strong increase in the labor participationof mothers with young children. In addition, DD method estimates show a strong increase inmothers with infants staying in permanent-contract regular employment. A signiﬁcant shorteningof work hours of workers, especially of parents with infants, is observed, which enabled working
mothers to maintain their employment status. A change in the gender wage gap in the Japaneselabor market is observed, but much progress is still required to close the large wage gap.
Key words: day care, female labor supply, gender wage gap, nonstandard work arrangement,
parental leave
JEL codes: J13, J21, J31
Accepted: 7 September 2017

1.

Introduction

Japan’s working population is shrinking rapidly. Improvement of the birth rate andsimultaneous increase of the female labor supply are essential for the Japanese economy to increase labor force. Successive Japanese governments rolled out policies toencourage both child bearing and increased labor supply by mothers from the 1990s
with surprisingly little success. From around 2010, we have seen some changes in thescenery.
The Abe Cabinet was formed in late 2012 and announced that “Womanomics” wasa key policy for economic growth. The core of the third arrow of Abenomics’ “JapanThe author thanks Ayako Kondo, Masako Kurosawa, and other participants of the Asian Economic Policy Conference and the editors of the journal, especially Takatoshi Ito and Colin
McKenzie, for their insightful and helpful comments. The author also thanks Japan’s Statistics
Ofﬁce for providing the microdata for the Labor Force Survey. The data were applied for andused, based on funding provided by an Abe Fellowship and by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant in Aid for Scientiﬁc Research (C) No. 15K03503, for the project“East Asia’s Declining Birthrates, Institutions to Match Spouses, and Labor Markets” (Project
Leader: Nobuko Nagase).
†Correspondence: Nobuke Nagase, Department of Social Sciences and Family Studies, Ochanomizu
University, 2-1-1 Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 112-8610, Japan. Email: nagase.nobuko@ocha.ac.jp
68© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic ResearchThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use
is non-commercial and no modiﬁcations or adaptations are made.

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Revitalization Strategy” is promoting women’s active participation in Japanese society.
The present paper examines how well this policy has worked.
The main aims of Womanomics are: (i) to increase women in leadership positions,(ii) to eliminate childcare waiting lists by increasing the supply to childcare places,(iii) to encourage men to take more active roles in parenting, and (iv) to achieve better
work and life balances and reduce the infamous long working hours of Japanese companies (Muraki, 2013). As we will see later, many of these policies had already been
started before the Abe Cabinet took ofﬁce. Was Abe more successful in the implementation of these policies than earlier administrations? On the whole, nonstandard
employment has been on the increase throughout the 2000s in Japan, while the wage
gap between permanent-contract regular employees1 and nonstandard employees has
been huge compared with other countries, even after controlling for such factors as
educational attainment, tenure, and occupation (Nagase, 1997a, 2003a; Osawa et al.,2012). Therefore, an increase of women in permanent-contract regular employment is
an important indicator of women’s career prospects that the present paper will focus
on. The nonstandard employees (hiseishain) are hourly workers called “part-time,”“arbeit (temporary),” “temporary dispatched,” “ﬁxed-term contract,” and otherworkers. The largest share of nonstandard employees is made up of “part-time” and“arbeit,” and this group will be called “hourly part-time.”
The present paper ﬁnds that during the period 2013–2015, there was a substantial
increase in the proportion of new mothers continuing to work as permanent-contract
regular employees. The labor supply of mothers with infants has signiﬁcantly increased
since 2013 under the Abe administration for both permanent-contract regular
employees and nonstandard employees. Apart from the impact of the changes in labor
supply brought about by the favorable changes such as increase in child care leaveallowance and reduction of living work hours introduced during the Abe administration, the strong growth in the provision of accredited infant care has had a signiﬁcanteffect on increasing the supply of maternal labor. The hours worked by mothers with
infants, especially those in permanent-contract regular employment, have decreased
substantially, and the hours worked by fathers and single males and females havedecreased by smaller but signiﬁcant amounts as well. These changes can be viewed as
signiﬁcant positive impacts of Abenomics. The number of women in leadership positions, however, is still very low as of 2015, although a major law was enacted in 2016,
and we need to wait to see the effect of this new law. The structural factors retaining agender income gap still remain a future challenge.
The structure of the present paper is organized as follows. The present paper willﬁrst give a short background introduction of the past measures taken by the Japanese
government to increase female labor supply and to allow childbearing along with work.
It will then provide detailed policies aimed at increasing work and life balance andincreasing women on the career ladder in order to show descriptive analysis of outcome
variables. Section 4 discusses the estimation strategy that is used to discover the impact
of policy measures on labor supply, which will be explained on labor market outcomes,
while Section 5 discusses the results. Section 6 provides some concluding remarks.
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2. General background: low maternal labor supply until early 2000s andsubsequent change
After the total fertility rate fell to 1.57 in 1989, the Japanese government sought toincrease the birth rate by reducing the opportunity cost of children for working
women. The main measures implemented in the 1990s and early 2000s were the introduction of a childcare leave program, its later enhancement, and an increase in thenumber of accredited childcare places.
Notwithstanding these policies, changes in maternal labor supply were small until
around 2005. According to the results of National Fertility Surveys, although the childcare leave program enacted in 1992 allowed those parents with leave entitlements totake 1 year’s leave without losing their jobs, around 40% of new mothers continued toquit their jobs until the early 2000s due to marriage and then childbirth, just as they
did in the 1980s and 1990s (Nagase, 1999; Nagase & Moriizumi, 2013). Asai (2015)
estimates the effect of the increase in the childcare leave allowance implemented in2001 among those with leave entitlements but ﬁnds no impact on maternal labor supply or work continuation. Abe (2010, 2011) shows that despite the implementation of
the Equal Employment Law in 1986 and its enhancement in 1997, and further amendments in 2007 and 2017, the ratio of women in permanent-contract regular employee
positions, where income often increases with tenure, never increased among women in
their mid-30s–40s. Teramura (2014) analyzes corporate culture pushing women
workers to quit upon marriage and childbirth. Eunmi and Brinton (2015) also point to
the importance of workplace culture for women to take childcare leave. Evidence from
the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s (MHLW) 2004 Longitudinal Survey of
Adults of 21st Century indicates that only 27% of permanent-contract regular employees
and less than 20% of all workers replied that they felt the childcare leave program wasaccessible and easy to use (Nagase, 2014). Marriage and childbirth continued to bedelayed and deferred while more women stayed single and worked (Iwasawa, 2004).
Many studies such as Unayama (2011) ﬁnd strong positive effects of day care provision on female employment at marriage and at childbirth. Nagase (2007), however,points out that the actual increase in infant care was quite limited in urban centerswhere demand was mounting. Asai et al. (2015) ﬁnd that childcare provision increasedmaternal employment in nuclear families but not in extended families, where day careseems to have substituted informal childcare provided by grandparents.
The government acknowledged the importance of changing work culture for bothmales and females in the early 2000s, and the Basic Act for Measures to Cope withSociety’s Declining Birth Rate of 2003 mandated municipalities as well as ﬁrms withmore than 300 employees to produce action plans to help employees who were raisingchildren. The Cabinet Ofﬁce introduced an award system for ﬁrms with high work–lifebalance awareness that allowed these ﬁrms to display a government certiﬁcation(“Kurumin” mark) on their products, even though the criteria for the award itself
involved implicit gender division at Japanese companies, such as a female use of childcare leave exceeding 70% and “at least one male child care leave user.” In late 2007,70© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

the government, the national headquarters of the employer organizations, and theunions created a “work and life balance charter” stating that having a work–life balance was necessary. Despite this menu of policies, the National Fertility Survey of2010, which shows the 5-year average of the ratio of new mothers in the workforce,
revealed that there was almost no increase in the ratio of women who continued workwhen their ﬁrst child was aged one.
Around 2009, statistics ﬁnally started showing that maternal employment wasincreasing. For example, the MHLW’s Longitudinal Survey of Children of the 21st Century showed that new mothers’ employment increased from 24.6% in the 2001 baby
cohort survey to 36.6% in the 2010 baby cohort survey. The National Fertility Surveyof 2015 also showed that the maternal employment rate of mothers with a ﬁrst childaged one rose from 29.1% in the period 2005–2009 to 38.3% in the period 2010–2014.
Using the difference-in-difference (DD) method, Nagase (2014, 2015) found thatthe 2009 short-hour option mandate that allowed workers with a child younger than
3 years to reduce work hours to 6 hours a day, which was extended to ﬁrms with morethan 100 employees from 2010 and to all ﬁrms from 2012, had a signiﬁcant and powerful effect on inducing change by increasing marriages, ﬁrst childbirths, and work
continuation as well. However, Nagase also found that it did not have a signiﬁcanteffect on the second or third births.
Figure 1 shows the trends of women in employment by selected marital statususing data from the Labor Force Survey. A strong rise in the labor participation of
mothers with children aged 0–3 years after 2009, and further increase after 2012, canbe observed. We can say that the main reason for the rise in the average labor participation rate of women aged 25–39 years during 2002–2015 was not because of the riseof single women but because of the rise of married women in employment.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
All

Never married

MarriedMothers with a child aged 0-3

Figure 1 Labor force participation rates for females aged 25–39 years.
Source: Computed by the author using microdata from the Labor Force Survey.
© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

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One important point to check is whether or not these mothers with a child aged
0–3 years were working as permanent-contract regular employees or as nonstandard
employment workers.
Figure 2 shows the percentage of women who worked as permanent-contract regular employees. The remaining women either work in nonstandard work arrangements
or are out of the labor force. Even though the percentage of women who worked aspermanent-contract regular employees was still 40% in 2015, the rise in permanentcontract regular women employees who were university graduates with one child aged
between 0 and 3 years is substantial. However, the work stability of single women witha high school education or less is deteriorating. For women who are high school graduates who never married and are aged 25–39 years, the percentage of permanentcontract regular employees dropped from 50% in 2002 to nearly 35% in 2015. On average, nearly one in two single women was either in nonstandard work or out of thelabor force in 2015. They may be in economic hardship since the income of nonstandard workers who are paid by the hour has been designed to be “additional help” tothe household budget, when it was initiated as hourly paid part-time work for married
women, and not as a means to support one’s own living.
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Mothers with a first child aged 0-3
Mothers who are university graduates with a first child aged 0-3
Never married
University graduates who have never marriedHigh school graduates who have never married

Figure 2 Percentage of Permanent-contract regular employees by educational attainment and by
marital status for women aged 25–39 years.
Source: Computed by the author using microdata from the Labor Force Survey.
72© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

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Even though we see some favorable developments, for second births, Nagase andBrinton (2017) ﬁnd that an increase in the time fathers spent on household work had
a signiﬁcant effect for dual-earning couples but that the actual time fathers devoted tohousehold work was far from enough to compensate for the negative effect of womenat work on birth timing. They also found that the labor practices at large ﬁrms reduce
paternal involvement in domestic work. Mizuochi (2010) also found that when fathers
involvement in household work increases, it increases the family’s intention to haveanother child.
3.

Womanomics and its targets

This section reviews government policy in four areas: childcare (Section 3.1), work–lifebalance (Section 3.2), tax and social security policies to increase married part-timeworkers’ hours worked (Section 3.3), and policies to increase the number of womenleaders (Section 3.4). Any positive effects on permanent-contract regular employment
have the potential long-run effect of keeping women in higher-paying jobs and on the
promotion ladder. For this reason, childcare leave and the government’s familyfriendly policies have been directed mainly toward helping mothers continue to workin permanent-contract regular employment. To achieve this aim, the Abe Cabinet’s policies have been to: (i) speed up increases in daycare supply, (ii) increase the childcare
allowance for childcare leave users for the ﬁrst 6 months of leave from 50% to 67% of
the salary, and (iii) strongly advocate family-friendly ﬁrm culture. The Abe Cabinet
has also advocated wage increases and a reduction of long overtime hours.
3.1 Childcare provision policy in JapanThe government started its supply of accredited and subsidized childcare early afterWorld War II to provide for children affected by the war. During the rapid economic
growth of the 1960s, however, the Social Security Council announced that the government should suppress the supply of subsidized infant care so that infants are cared forin an intimate environment. In the years to come, the provision of infant care was suppressed, while the subsidized day care for children aged over 3 years was increased(Nagase, 1997b).
Child day care and kindergarten are managed by different ministries in Japan; thus,
accredited day care facilities are treated as welfare facilities and fall under the administration of MHLW, while kindergartens, which are considered to be schools, fall under
the administration of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Government subsidies for child day care facilities were larger than thosefor kindergartens. Kindergartens are facilities for children aged 3–6 years, whose opening hours were basically 4 hours a day. In order to attend accredited day care, a child
had to lack family care, such as having both parents working or being ill, and no otherrelatives to take care of the child. However, in Nagase’s (2003b) survey of 3300 municipalities conducted in 1997, which concerned day care and kindergarten care provision2© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

73Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

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and had a response rate of 64%, she found large regional variations in the use of accredited day care and kindergarten provision, which went far beyond the general rules
and the regional differences in maternal employment rates. In general, subsidized
accredited day care was found to be more prevalent in the rural area because more
women worked as family workers and also because of higher governmental subsidy
outlays. In urban areas, kindergartens were more prominent. The provision of infantcare was suppressed in all regions in 1997, providing much less than 10% of the zeroyear-old population. In urban metropolitan areas, where the provision rate of kindergarten
was higher than that of day care, the ratio of stay-at-home mothers remained high.
The drop in fertility rates made the MHLW change its policy to start increasing the
supply of accredited infant day care through the so-called Angel Plan of 1994–1999,
the New Angel Plan of 2000–2004, and the Renewed Angels Plan of 2005–2009. The
increase in supply was slow, especially in urban areas, despite the higher demand andlower supply, while the increase in places for infants in rural areas performed better(Nagase, 2007).
In 2008, a clear long-term governmental target concerning childcare provision was
ﬁnally made, namely, the long-term target of increasing the ratio of childcare places
for children aged under 3 years from 20% at the time to 38% by 2017.3 For the ﬁrst
time, municipalities recognized the clear national target for infant day care provision.
Another impetus for change was the establishment of three new laws concerning
childcare in August 2012. The Noda government promised that the budget for aiding
childcare supply would be increased when the consumption tax law passed and that it
would introduce new subsidies that not only cover accredited day care but also kindergartens if the mother worked. Although the consumption tax was not increased asplanned, the reform went forward, and the Abe Cabinet ensured that day care availability increased by a further 200,000 places between 2013 and 2015 and another
200,000 places 2017.
Increasing day care places for infants, however, has not been straightforward.
Table 1 provides information on the trends in some selected densely populated prefectures and rural prefectures. In 2002, the percentage of accredited day care places forthe 2-year-old population was only 26% in Tokyo, 13% in Kanagawa, and 14% in Saitama, the three prefectures in the larger Tokyo metropolitan area where work opportunities are abundant. However, the percentage was as high as 40% in Tottori and 42%
in Shimane, both rural prefectures.
Not only was the provision of childcare low in metropolitan areas, but the growthof infant care was also slow till 2008 despite the series of “Angel Plans.” Table 1 showsthat over the period 2002–2007, the rate of increase in childcare places for children
aged 2 years was 6% and 8% in Tottori and Shimane, respectively, which already had
2-year-old day care provision ratios of over 40% of the relevant child population, while
the growth rate was only 8% in Saitama and a mere 3% in Tokyo. Tokyo prefecture
introduced the less-costly Tokyo Metropolitan Government Certiﬁed childcare places,
which are not included in these data. However, even when those non-accredited childcare places are included, the growth of childcare places in Tokyo was slow (Nagase,74© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

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Table 1 Growth rate of registered childcare places for 2-year-olds in selected prefectures
Childcare places to childpopulation for two year old‡

Growth rate (%)†
2002 ,2007

2008,20122013,2015

2002

2015

5
5
4
4

8
8
8
8

0.26
0.13
0.14
0.16

0.35
0.29
0.28
0.30

3
3
4
0

0.24
0.40
0.42
0.31

0.41
0.62
0.75
0.63

Densely populated prefectures
Tokyo
Kanagawa
Saitama
Chiba

3
10
8
6

Prefectures with declining populations
Wakayama
Tottori
Shimane
Akita

5
6
8
7

2
2
3
0

Note: †The “growth rate” is the annual growth rate of the three-interval period. ‡Childcare
Places to Child Population is computed as the ratio of the number of accredited day care places
for 2-year-olds obtained from MHLW’s Survey of Social Welfare Institutions divided by estimatesof the number of 2-year-old children derived from the Population Census.
Source: Computed by the author using data from the Statistics Ofﬁce’s Population Census andthe MHLW Survey of Social Welfare Institutions.

2007). The reason for this is the tenure-based salaries of public servants, which madepublicly provided infant care rather costly (Shu, 2002; Shimizutani & Noguchi, 2004).
Richer municipalities were more likely to operate infant care facilities with public servants (Nagase, 2003b). Although municipalities tried to replace municipally run accredited day care with privately run accredited daycare,4 they faced opposition from bothlabor unions and parents associations, and making changes required time. Rural prefectures, however, could easily expand the number of infant care places because ofopen spaces generated by the decling number of children caused by demographic
change.
Local governments in urban areas aimed for a higher growth of child care places
after the common national target was introduced in 2008, and the system changed
after a new child law was implemented in 2013, as can be seen in the third and fourthcolumns (2008 , 2012 and 2013 , 2015) in Table 1 where we can observe higher
growth in metropolitan prefectures compared with rural prefectures. The two columnson the far right of Table 1 also show that the ratio of childcare places per children
increases when the infant population declines. For example, the provision ratio for
Akita more than doubled between 2002 and 2015 and reached over 60% despite theextremely low growth in actual infant care places.
© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

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3.2 Policies to encourage fathers to achieve a better work–life balance
After taking over ofﬁce, the Abe Cabinet has been advocating work with no or smaller
amounts of overtime and has encouraged fathers to have a greater involvement in childrearing.
Through an amendment of the Labor Standards Law (Rodo Kijun Ho) in 1987, the40-hour work week became universal in April 1994. According to Labor Force Survey,
however, the percentage of male workers with over 60 weekly work hours remained
over 20% in the early 2000s and continued to be nearly 20% around 2010 for male permanent-contract regular employees in their 30s and 40s. Article 36 of Labor Standards
Law was rather lenient in relation to overtime work if an employer and his or her
employee representatives made a written agreement, which was reported to the Labor
Standard Ofﬁce and which provided that the employer paid an overtime premium.
Sasajima (2016) states that a 25% overtime premium is not enough as it excludes
bonus payments and makes overtime work less costly than new hires. The Abe Cabinet
has been advocating reductions in the amount of overtime work. Figure 3 shows thechanges in the average weekly work hours of permanent-contract regular employees in
the child-rearing age band of 25–39 years by gender and marital status over the period
2002–2015. Average hours worked appear to decline for males and also for single

55

50

45

Hours

40

35

Male permanent contract regular employees all
30

Male never married
Male married

25

Female permanent contract regular employees all
Female never marriedFemale married

20
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

Figure 3 Weekly hours worked by Permanent-contract regular employees aged 25–39 years.
Source: Computed by the author using microdata from the Labor Force Survey.
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females after 2013. The change is even more pronounced for married females, whose
average work hours were around 32 hours per week in 2015 (including those taking
leave).
The standard period of childcare leave was until the child in question reached hisor her ﬁrst birthday. In order to encourage the use of childcare leave beneﬁts, if fathers
took the leave, the leave was extended till the child is 14 months old, 2 months morefrom 2009.5 In most urban areas, however, from April 2005, parents were given an
extension of 6 months to the standard leave period of 12 months if the mother could
not go back to work 12 months after the child’s birth due to a lack of accredited childcare facilities. This meant that the leave extension for fathers did not have much
impact.6
Starting after April 2014, the Abe government increased the leave allowance, whichis paid out of employment insurance funds for the ﬁrst 6 months of child care, from
50% to 67% of the recipient’s pre-child birth monthly standard income. This had a real
impact not only for mothers but also for fathers. If both the father and mother avail
the leave, both can have 67% of child care allowance for the ﬁrst 6 months, up from50% previously.
The availing of leave by fathers, however, is still negligible. According to MHLW’s
Basic Survey of Gender Equality in Employment Management (Koyou Kinto Kihon
Chosa), which surveys private enterprise with more than ﬁve employees, the percentage
ratio of fathers taking child care leave was 1.23% in 2008, 1.72% in 2009, 2.6% in 2015,
and 3.16% in 2016.

3.3 Policies to increase married part-time workers’ hours worked
The current tax and social security protection favoring low-earning dependent wives
has long provided an incentive for part-time workers to earn less than around 1 million
yen per year (roughly US$8000; Abe, 2002; Nagase, 2002; Akabayashi, 2006; Abe &Oishi, 2009). Under this system, spouses with earned income below 1.03 million yen
per year do not pay national income tax, and their spouses can also claim a spousededuction. Spouses of wage and salary earners are also exempted from paying social
security-related payments for pensions, health, and long-term care insurance if theirannual income is below 1.3 million yen per year but are given the full beneﬁts of thehealth and long-term care insurance system and can also receive the ﬁrst tier of a public pension without having paid any premiums on their own. Moreover, private as wellas public ﬁrms often provide spouse allowances to wage and salaried workers, and thisallowance is often given only to workers whose spouse earns an amount below theincome tax or social security thresholds. Even though Takahashi (2010) and Besshoand Hayashi (2014) have suggested that a policy change should not increase the hours
worked by married females by a large amount, this system has resulted in widespreadadjustments of the hours worked by housewives that about one in ﬁve hourly part-timeworkers with school children are bunching at the threshold.
© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

77Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

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Prime Minister Abe announced in 2013, and again in 2014, that he will change theincome tax system and abolish the tax-related spouse deduction, which has implicitly
supported the typical family model of a male breadwinner and a female home-maker.
Following his lead, large enterprises, such as Toyota, started discussions in 2014 andannounced in July 2015 that, after a transition period, the ﬁrm’s family allowance will
be linked to the number of children and that the spouse allowance will be abolished.
The National Personnel Authority also announced that it would abolish or reduce thedependent spouse allowance for national public servants.
In the end, however, Prime Minister Abe did not abolish the spouse income deductionof 0.38 million yen, which was formerly linked to spousal incomes of below 1.03 million
yen. Instead, in late 2016, he announced that he will increase the deduction to link tospouse incomes of 1.50 million yen from January 2018. The effect of this policy is notstraightforward as there is still a 1.30 million yen social security tax threshold. Moreover,from October 2016, those hourly part-time workers working at ﬁrms with more than
500 employees who work more than 20 hours a week and whose monthly income is over
88,000 yen, or 1.06 million yen a year were mandated by law to join the employee’s social
security tax program, or Kosei pension program, and have social security tax be levied onthem. This was planned in 2012 by the Reform of National Pension Law.
3.4 Policies to increase women leaders
Policies to increase the number of women leaders are a core priority of the Abe Cabinet. When he took over ofﬁce in 2013, Abe announced that he hoped listed ﬁrms
would appoint at least one woman to their boards. To promote women in management, from April 2015, all listed ﬁrms were required to disclose the number of theirfemale board members. In August 2015, the Diet passed the Act Concerning Promotion of Women’s Career Activities (Josei Katsuyaku Suisin Hou), which was to comeinto effect in April 2016. This law nudges enterprises to take actions to promotewomen through voluntary action plans. The law particularly demands that all ﬁrms
with more than 300 employees analyze the status of women within their ﬁrms andthen make action plans to increase women’s active participation. These plans shouldbe accredited by the local MHLW ofﬁce.7 Firms with good performance will be recognized by the government recognition in the form of marks (Eruboshi) that they canput on their products.8 In March 2016, the government announced that those ﬁrms
earning such recognition will be given preference points in public procurements.
Although this policy is an important policy goal, because the new law was enacted
from 2016 and our LFS data is only available up to 2015, we cannot examine the effectof this policy. It can be said that progress has been slow. As early as 2003, the government has adopted the target of increasing the share of women leaders to at least 30%
by 2020 (the “202030 target”), but progress has been poor. The government still has‘202030 target’, but the various targets adopted in December 2015 were in generallower, for example, women middle managers at private enterprise, kacho, to be 15%
by 2020.
78© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

4.

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Estimation strategy and data

4.1 Estimation strategy
The approach adopted in the present paper is not to try and identify the effects ofindividual policies implemented by the Abe Administration that were discussed in
Section 3 but rather to treat the individual policies as a package called Abe’s Womanomics of 2013–2015 and use the DD method to identify the causal effects of the
package on married women’s labor market variables. In addition, the impact ofchanges in the supply of childcare on married women’s labor market variables is also
explicitly investigated at the same time.
To investigate the policy impacts on the labor supply of women, the following stylized model is assumed:
Y1i = a1 + b1 Youngest Childi + c1 Dpi + d1 ðyears of policy 2013 − 2015Þi
+ e1 Youngest Childi × Dpi + f1 Youngest Childi × ðyears of policy 2013 − 2015Þi
+ g1 H1i + u1i

ð1Þ

where Y1i is a 0–1 labor supply dummy variable. In one case (Employment), it takes
the value of 1 if the person is working and 0 if the person is not working. In the second case (permanent-contract regular employment), the 0–1 dummy variable takes thevalue of 1 if the person is in permanent-contract regular employment and 0 otherwise.
The three key explanatory variables are: Youngest Childi, which is a 0–1 dummy variable relating to the age of the youngest child in the family; Dpi, which is the prefecturalindex for accredited day care provision where the subscript p stands for the prefecture
where the person lives; and (years of policy 2013–2015), which is a 0–1 dummy variable taking the value of 1 for the years 2013–2015 and 0 otherwise. H1i is the vector ofcovariates, such as educational attainment, age and age squared, the number of children in the household, whether there is a grandmother present in the household, thespouse’s income, regional dummies, year dummies for 2002–2011, the growth rate ofchildcare facilities in the relevant prefecture, and the job openings to job seekers ratio.
The last two variables are included to take account of active increases in the provisionof childcare places that was noted in Section 3.1 and changes in demand, respectively.
The disturbance term u1i is assumed to be u1i ~NIID(0, σ12).
The coefﬁcient c1 can be interpreted as a measure of the effect of increasing the
supply of day care on married women without young children. c1 may not be zero
because the availability of day care may affect labor supply of women who have either
not yet had a child but intend to do so in the future or who have children older than
10 years. c1+e1 represents the effect of a one-unit increase in day care supply on
mothers with young children.9 The coefﬁcient d1 can be interpreted as measuring how
Abe’s Womanomics policies have affected the labor supply outcomes of married
women relative to the period before Abenomics, ignoring the effect of day care provision, and d1 + f1 measures the impact of that for mothers with young children.
© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

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The combined effect of Abe’s policy on the maternal choice to be in “gainful
employment” can be regarded as being measured by d1 + f1, plus (c1 + e1) × (theactual increase in childcare provision during the period).
We will also estimate the determinants of hours worked per week using the DD
method to investigate the impact of Abenomics on permanent-contract regular
employees for both males and females. As most permanent-contract regular employees
are expected to work full time and must have some kind of childcare arrangement, theDD effect of the policy period for work hours has been mainly focused on. Even
though most husbands do not take leave at childbirth, if the “Womanomics” policy
allows more fathers to reduce their work hours, then the policy should be regarded as
being successful in giving fathers more time with children. The stylized model forhours worked is assumed to be as follows:
weekly work hoursi = a2 + b2 ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi + c2 Youngest Childi+ d2 Marriedi + e2 Marriedi *ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi
+ f2 Youngest Childi *ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi
+ g2 ðYear 2010 − 2012Þi *Youngest Childi + h2 H2i + u2i ,ð2Þwhere weekly work hours is the number of hours worked per work for those people
in employment, and it is unobserved for those people who are not in employment;
marriage is a 0–1 dummy variable, taking the value 1 if the respondent is marriedand 0 otherwise, H2i is a vector of covariates, such as age and age squared, the number of children in the household, the spouse’s income (=0 if unmarried), regionaldummies, year dummies for 2002–2011, monthly dummies, the predicted log wage,
and the job openings to job seekers ratio. As the hours worked equation will be estimated jointly with individuals’ selection to work, the disturbance term u2i is assumed
to have the properties u2i~NIID(0, 1) and Corr (u1iu2i )=ρ1, and the predicted log
wage rate is computed for each respondent using the estimates of the wage equationin Table S4 in the online supplementary material, where the selection to work as permanent-contract regular employee has been controlled for. The speciﬁcation of
Equation (2) enables us to see if hours worked were reduced by Abenomics andwhether the effect was stronger for people who are married or have young infants intheir family. That is, if e2 and f2 are negative, then Abe’s policies were successful in
reducing the long work hours of permanent-contract regular employees. (Year 20102012) was added to account for short-hour option mandate for workers with childbelow age 3 starting from 2010.
The hours worked Equation in (2) is estimated together with a work choice equation
similar to (1) by maximum likelihood estimation to account for the impact of sample selection. We will see the policy effect on work hours of permanent-contract regular employees.
In the third part of our analysis, we examine the effect of Abenomics on hours
worked by all workers (including nonstandard employees) by estimating the following
stylized hours of work equation:80© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

weekly work hoursi = a2 + b2 ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi + c2 Youngest Childi+ d2 Marriedi + e2 Marriedi *ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi
+ f2 Youngest Childi *ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi
+ g2 ðYear 2010 −2012Þi *Youngest Childi + h2 H2i + j3 ðnonstandard employment Þi+ k3 Married*ðnonstandard employmenti Þ + l3 ðnonstandard employment Þi*ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi + m3 Marriedi *ðnonstandard employment Þi*ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi + u2i

ð3Þ

where nonstandard employment is a 0–1 dummy variable taking the value 1 if the person is in nonstandard employment and 0 otherwise. Similar dummies are deﬁned forpermanent-contract regular employees and company executives, so self-employed andfamily workers are the base group. In order to determine whether or not Abe’s advocacy of changing the income tax and related systems that provide support for dependent housewives have any effect on the hours worked by married part-time women,
Equation (3) adopts the difference in difference in difference (DDD) method. If thecoefﬁcient m3 is positive and signiﬁcant, Abe’s policy can be interpreted as having had
the desired effect of increasing the hours worked by part-time married woman.
The ﬁnal part of our analysis is to investigate the policy impact on hourly wages
using the following log wage equation estimated jointly with work decision:
lnwagei = a3 + b3 ðyears of policy 2013 to 2015Þi
+ c3 ðnonstandard employment Þi + d3 H3i + u3i ,ð4Þwhere lnwage is the log of the hourly wage rate; H3i contains control variables relating
to educational attainment, tenure and tenure squared, external experience and external
experience squared, and dummies for ﬁrm size; and the disturbance term u3i isassumed to have the properties u3i~NIID(0, 1) and Corr (u1i u3i )=ρ2.
4.2 Data
The analysis here uses 156 repeated monthly cross-sections of microdata from the Statistics Ofﬁce’s (Japan) Labor Force Survey (LFS) over the period 2002–2015. The LFS isa nationally representative survey conducted every month that covers about 40,000
households and about 100,000 individuals over the age of 15.10 To be accurate, it is arotating panel with respect to the residences, which are surveyed a total of four times
in two successive years, two consecutive months in the ﬁrst year and the same twoconsecutive months in the second year. From January 2002, the survey began to collectdata on the fourth and last visit to households using a longer questionnaire, which
asked not only about labor force status but also about educational attainment, tenure,and annual income in the previous year for all relevant individuals in the household;data from this longer questionnaire are used, which gives data on about 10,000 households or 18,000–22,000 individuals every month.
© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

81Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

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Dpi, the prefectural index for accredited day care provision, is measured as thenumber of places of accredited day care facilities for 2-year-olds in the prefecture
where the person lives divided by the number of 2-year-olds in the prefecture estimated from the Census. Data on the availability of childcare are taken from the
MHLW’s Survey of Social Welfare Institutions (Shakai Shisetu tou Chosa), which surveys all accredited day care institutions and provides information on the number ofchildren who use accredited day care facilities by the age of the child in October every
year. This prefectural-level panel dataset of day care provision is standardized by the
number of 2-year-old children in each prefecture, estimated from Census data, and ismerged with the microdata in the LFS. Figure 4 shows the movement of the supply of
day care places for 2-year-olds during our sample period 2002–2015.
Accredited day care facilities cover a good proportion of the facilities for childcare.11 Our measurement approach departs from Asai et al. (2015) or Unayama(2011), who use the number of accredited day care places for 0–6-year-old divided by

Figure 4 Supply of registered day care places for children aged 2 years.
Source: Computed from data obtained from the MLHW’s Survey of Social Welfare Institutions.
82© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

the number of children in that age for the relevant prefecture. The present paper uses
an index based on 2-year-olds for two reasons. For one thing, for children aged 3-6
years, kindergartens function as a substitute for accredited day care, and this has
become increasingly more so as more kindergartens offer the option of an after-school
care program. The number of kindergartens offering after-school childcare was 29.2%
in 1997, 70.6% in 2006, and 81.4% 2012 according to the MEXT’s Survey on Child
Education (Yoji Kyoiku Jittai Chosa). There are large regional variations in the use ofkindergarten in that ignoring kindergarten as a care facility will cause strong regional
bias if we consider childcare provision for children aged 0–6 years.12
The second reason is the importance of infant childcare for paid employment. In
her municipality-based analysis using data for 1997, Nagase (2003b) ﬁnds that thedemand for infant childcare was statistically higher when a larger fraction of mothers
were wage earners as compared with family workers. The provision of day care for
infants after mothers take protected childcare leave is more important for the return of
mothers to paid employment with their pre-birth employer compared with family
workers. Since the return to permanent-contract regular employment in middle age
after a period of joblessness in Japan has been found to be difﬁcult (Nagase, 2011),
childcare provision is all the more important.
Data on the job openings to job seekers ratio are obtained monthly by prefecture atthe prefectural labor ofﬁce for job seekers, and the monthly prefectural data arematched with the employment data.
As the LFS only has data on the number of hours worked in a week and annual income
for the previous year for 12 categories, the hourly wage rate is computed as the mid-point
for the category for annual income divided by weekly work hour times 50 weeks.13
5.

Econometric analysis of the effect of Womanomics

5.1 Married women’s labor force participation and permanent-contract regular
employee participation
Table 2 reports estimates of the marginal effects of the variables when Equation (1) isestimated for married women aged 25–54 years using a probit estimator, with standard
errors adjusted to account for prefectural clustered data. The column labeled “Employment” shows the results when the employment decision, namely, being employed(1) and being out of employment (0), is analyzed. The column labeled “Permanentcontract regular employee” shows the result of the permanent-contract regular employee
participation decision, where other forms of employment as well as those people out of
employment are assigned a value of 0. We see that a husband’s higher income andyoung children have strong negative effects on married women’s employment; such
effects are signiﬁcant but smaller for the choice of permanent-contract regular employee
participation, while having a higher education strongly increases the probability of awoman being in permanent-contract regular employment. The presence of a grandmother in the household has a strong positive impact on both forms of maternal labor
participation.
© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research83

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Table 2 Labor participation of married females aged 25–54 years

Educational attainment dummy
14 years
16 years
Age
Age squared
Supply of day care
Day care places to child ratio (age 2)
Growth rate for childcare capacity (age 2)
Youngest child 0–3 × day care places to child ratio (age 2)
Youngest child 4–6 × day care places to child ratio (age 2)
Youngest child 7–9 × day care places to child ratio (age 2)
Husband’s last year income
Age of youngest child
Youngest child 0–3 dummy
Youngest child 4–6 dummy
Youngest child 7–9 dummy
Youngest child 10–12 dummy
Youngest child 13–14 dummy
Youngest child over 15’dummyYears of policy
Years of policy × youngest child 0–3

84

Employment

Permanentcontract regular
employment

0.0261***(4.3)
0.0618***(7.9)
0.0209***(15.9)−0.0003***(−16.9)0.0820***(14.4)
0.1864***(24.5)
0.0060***(4.8)−0.0001***(–6.1)

0.1639***(2.6)
0.6441***(4.0)
0.4608***(5.7)
0.4639***(8.5)
0.1801***(4.9)−0.0002 ***(−40.3)0.2035***(3.5)
0.5352***(3.4)
0.0562(1.5)
0.1209***(2.9)
0.1461***(4.7)−0.0001 ***(−21.1)−0.4890***(−26.7)−0.3425***(−18.6)−0.1570***(−10.1)−0.0309***(−4.1)
0.0084(1.5)
0.0222***(5.5)
0.0141**(6.3)
0.0256***(2.7)−0.0976***(–9.8)−0.1119***(–10.9)−0.1017***(–10.7)−0.0480***(–8.5)−0.0204***(–3.8)−0.0010(−0.2)−0.0087*(−1.9)
0.0465***(6.4)© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Table 2 continued

Years of policy × youngest child 4–6
Years of policy × youngest child 7–9
Years of policy × youngest child 10–12
Years of policy × youngest child 13–14
Years of policy × youngest child over 15
Number of children in the family
Grandmother in the household
Job opening to job seeker ratio
PsuedoR2
Psuedo log likelihood
Sample size

Employment

Permanentcontract regular
employment

0.0031(0.4)
0.0188***(2.9)
0.0070(1.0)
0.0030(0.4)
0.0101 **(2.0)
0.0362***(14.2)
0.1185***(19.6)−0.0133(−1.2)

0.0166**(2.1)−0.0062(−1.0)−0.0057(−0.8)−0.0099(−1.4)−0.0054(−1.1)−0.0047***(–4.5)
0.1032***(20.6)−0.0094(−0.8)

0.0786−307,755

0.0474−264,227.0
516,840

Note: This table reports the marginal effects and t-values for the coefﬁcient for each control variable when the underlying model is estimated by the Probit method. In addition to the variables
reported in the table, the model also includes regional dummies, year dummies for 2002–2011(with 2012 as the base year), and monthly dummies. ***, **, and * indicate statistical signiﬁcance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively. Numbers in ( ) indicates t-values.

There are contrasting effects of an increase in the number of children in the family;
while an increase in the number of children pushes stay-at-home mothers to engage in
gainful employment, the increase in the number of children pull mothers out of permanent-contract regular employee positions.
Let us now examine the effect of childcare supply. We see that both a higher growthrate of spaces for 2-year-old children and a higher ratio of day care facilities for 2-yearolds to children signiﬁcantly increase employment, and also permanent-contract regular
employee participation of married women in general. The effect on mothers with infants
aged 0–3 years is the combined sum of this effect on married women in general and thecross effects of that of mothers with young children. The latter effect is also positive andsigniﬁcant for most cases. During 2013–2015, the 2-year-old childcare provision ratio at
the national level rose by 2.5% points, and the annual growth was 3.9%. Using the estimated coefﬁcients, during the 2013–2015 period, the employment of married women© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

85

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Nobuko Nagase

without young children is estimated to have gone up by 2.9%, that of mothers with ayoungest children aged 0–3 years by 4.1%, the permanent-contract regular employee
participation of married women by 2.6%, and that of mothers with infants by 2.7%
because of the increased provision of childcare. For a prefecture such as Tokyo where
the childcare provision growth was exceptionally high, it is estimated that the employment of married women increased by nearly 6%, for mothers with infants by 8%, theincrease in the permanent-contract regular employee participation of married women bymore than 5%, and for mothers with infants by more than 5%.
In addition, the DD analysis shows that the years of Abe’s policies increased married women’s employment additionally by 1.4% compared to the base year of 2012 andthe employment of mothers with a youngest child aged 0–3 additionally by 4.0%. It
also increased the permanent regular employment of new mothers signiﬁcantly, additionally by 3.8%, but reduced the permanent regular employment of married women
without young children by 0.9% compared with the base year of 2012. After controlling for the changes in the provision of childcare, the labor attachment of mothers withyoung children increased substantially during this policy period
Therefore, both policies, the stronger growth in day care provision, and Abe’s policies to ease the work–life balance (including increased childcare leave allowance during
the period and policies focused on decreasing overtime work) worked to increase
married females’ permanent-contract regular employee participation and also the labor
force participation.
Our ﬁnding of the signiﬁcant effects of day care contrasts with the recent study ofAsai et al. (2015) who challenged many earlier studies on the effect of childcare onmaternal labor supply by stating that their prefectural ﬁxed effects model suggested
that childcare provision was only a substitute for the informal care provided by grandparents and that it did not increase maternal employment in three-generation households, even though the effect was signiﬁcant in nuclear households. Asai et al. use
prefectural Census data aggregated by family type that spans the period 1990–2010.
The rapid changes in maternal labor structure as well as family structure during this20-year period requires mention. For one thing, the number of three-generation households has shrunk drastically. According to MHWL’s Comprehensive Survey of Living
Conditions, the percentage of three-generation households among households (excluding single households) was 17% in 1992, 14% in 2001, and 9% in 2013. This includes
three-generation households with grown-up children who have no need for day care.
In our data, the percentage of married women with children in the age range 25–54
years living with the household head’s mother or mother-in-law was already as low as
9% in 2002 and 4% in 2015, showing a further shrinking of three-generation households for the younger generation. The reduction in the proportion of three-generation
households is also related to changes in industry structure. The Statistics Ofﬁce’s
Employment Status Survey of 1992 shows that as many as one-third of married females
worked as family workers or were self-employed when more husbands worked as selfemployed, while three-generation households were more prominent in such families.
In our data, for married women in the age range of 25–54 years, such informal
86© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

workers already comprised only 14% in 2002, and this decreased to 6% in 2015. Therefore, the analysis pertaining to three-generation households is of small signiﬁcance forthe analysis of maternal labor in the 2000s. However, one might say that during theperiod 1995–2005, the provision of infant care in rural prefectures increased not only
because it was a nationally advocated policy but also because many day care centers in
the rural prefectures were faced with losing customers due to the drain of young
workers to metropolitan areas. Therefore, the results of Asai et al. (2015) can be interpreted as meaning that the increase of infant care in rural areas with three-generation
households was more supply-led than demand-led. Our results showed the importanceof provision of infant care for maternal employment in present-day Japan.
Overall, during Abe’s administration, maternal employment increased as a result of
the increase in child-care provision and Abe’s other initiatives. At the same time, I
should mention that the participation of married women in permanent-contract regular
employment has been on a long declining trend, even though Abe’s policies and theincreased provision of childcare encouraged those women already in permanent-contract
regular employment to continue to work after they took childcare leave.
5.2 Changes in hours worked for males and females
The results of estimating an hours worked equation together with an equation to takeaccount of the sample selection to work as permanent-contract regular employment are
shown in Table 3. As Abe’s policy related to hours worked was not conﬁned to motherswith infants but directed to all workers, including males and single workers, the hours
worked equation was estimated for both males and females, where both samples
included married and unmarried individuals. Those who are on leave are also includedin the sample.
Permanent-contract regular employees are known for their long working hours.
However, when one’s youngest child was less than 3 years old, we see, in the left columns of Table 3, that maternal work hours were reduced by 6.0 hours and, additionally, by as much as 6.1 hours during the policy period. This reduction is even larger
than the 3.5-hour decline in the hours worked by mothers of infants when the shorthour option mandate regulation was passed in 2009 and enacted from 2010, as can beseen from the signiﬁcant and negative estimated coefﬁcient on the interaction term
between infants and the years 2010–2012 in Table 3. The reduction in hours worked
by permanent-contract female regular employees with children was substantial during
the Abe administration due to the increase in leave taking and the increased use of theshorter hour work option. Additionally, we ﬁnd that during the policy period, theweekly hours worked by married females fell statistically signiﬁcantly by 0.8 hours, andfor unmarried and married males, they fell signiﬁcantly by 1.6 and 0.3 hours, respectively, compared with the base year of 2012.
Now, let us examine the effect on fathers, as given in the right columns of Table 3.
The hours worked by fathers are often found to become longer when a baby is born;
presumably, this is to support the family as more women tend to stay at home. However, during the years of the Abe policies, the hours worked by fathers with young© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research87Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Table 3 Weekly hours worked for females and males aged 25–54 years in permanent-contract
employment
FemaleCoefﬁcientMalet-value

Coefﬁcient t-value

Work hour equation for permanent contract regular employees
Age
Age squaredYears of policy
Years of policy × married
Married dummyYears of policy × youngest child 0–3
Years of policy × youngest child 4–6
Years of policy × youngest child 7−9Years of policy × youngest child 10–12
Years of policy × youngest child 13–14
Years of policy × youngest child over 15
Youngest child 0−3 dummy
Youngest child 4−6 dummy
Youngest child 7–9 dummy
Youngest child 10–12 dummy
Youngest child 13–14 dummy
Youngest child over 15 dummy
Number of children in the family
Spouse’s last year income ( 0 if not married)
Job-opening job-seeker ratio
Predicted log wage
Year 2010−2012*youngest child 0–3

0.018
0.001
0.109
−0.7692.936−6.110−1.299−0.375
0.489
0.937
0.067
−5.9740.332
0.178−0.160−0.946−1.1440.629
0.000−0.0291.463−3.4760.49
2.71***
0.70−4.90***
32.5***−16.3***−3.81***
−1.32
1.74*
2.79***
0.52−26.2***
1.63
0.88
−0.83
−4.62***−10.3***
11.2***
2.77***−0.19
17.9***−12.5***

0.633−0.009−1.6321.327
4.507−0.727−0.598−0.215−0.068
0.603
0.416
1.558
1.512
1.248
1.157
0.750
−0.170−0.264−0.0020.873−3.106−0.27824.9***−29.2***−13.0***
11.0***
70.7***−4.44***−3.05***
−1.13
−0.35
2.65**
3.79***
14.9***
13.0***
10.7***
9.88***
5.76***−2.26***−7.81***−18.4***
8.88***−47.6***−2.25***−0.0130.000−0.465
0.063
0.283
1.085
0.852

−6.25***−0.20−95.4***
7.25***
11.3***
12.4***
17.6***

0.034−0.001
0.511
0.167−0.2830.313
0.111

16.7***−25.3***
106.4***
18.8***−10.1***
3.30***
2.30**

0.730

13.4***

0.187

3.04***

0.709

13.0***

0.117

1.97*

0.000

−29.5***

0.000−19.8***

Selection equation to permanent contract regular employees
Age
Age squared
Married dummyYears of policy × married
Day care places to child ratio (age 2)
Growth rate of child care capacity (age 2)Child 0–3 × day care places to child ratio(age 2)Child 4–6 × day care Places to child Ratio(Age 2)Child 7–9 × Day care places to child ratio(age 2)
Spouse’s last year income ( 0 if not married)88© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Table 3 continued
FemaleMale

Coefﬁcientt-value

Coefﬁcient t-value

Youngest child 0–3 dummy
Youngest child 4–6 dummy
Youngest child 7–9 dummy
Youngest child 10–12 dummy
Youngest child 13−14 dummy
Youngest child over 15 dummyYears of policy
Years of policy × youngest child 0–3
Years of policy × youngest child 4–6
Number of children in the family
Grandmother in the household
Job-opening job-seeker ratio−0.069−0.500−0.528−0.441−0.134−0.032
0.068
0.154
0.058
−0.0240.186
0.013−7.67***−28.9***−27.1***−21.9***−13.8***−3.02***
11.3***
10.3***
3.21***−8.24***
29.3***
1.56

Estimated ρ1
Estimated σ

−0.83
15.83

0.72
14.14

log pseudo-likelihood
Number of observations
Number of uncensored observations−1E+06733,118
218,102−2E+06702,653493,729−0.070
0.184
0.136
0.139
0.165
0.152
0.054
−0.066−0.054−0.054−0.037−0.016−7.97***
11.0***
6.51***
6.62***
17.2***
14.4***
9.22***−4.52***−2.95***−18.8***−5.84***−1.96**

Note: This table reports the estimates of Equations (1) and (2) jointly using the maximum likelihood method. Other controls, 11 regional dummies, year dummies, and month dummies. Workhour regression with selection correction, seishain age 25–54. ***signiﬁcant at 1% level, ** significant at 5% level, * signiﬁcant at 10% level.

children were also reduced, albeit by a small amount of 0.6–0.7 hours when the youngest child was younger than the age of 6, showing a signiﬁcant effect of the policy
years.
Matsubara (2012) and Takeishi (2013) suggest that working short hours for a long
period of time is not good for a woman’s career prospect. Indeed, more ﬁrms are trying to get women back to working normal hours when their children grow older. Our
results show that during the policy period, mothers of children over 10 years increased
their work hours.
A higher job opening to job seeker ratio increases the hours worked by marriedmales, but the effect was not signiﬁcant for females. A higher job opening to job seeker
ratio strengthens the position of workers, and the result seems to indicate that female
permanent-contract regular employees prefer shorter work hours.
These effects were evident after controlling for sample selection to work as permanent-contract regular employment, as shown in the lower panel. When we examine theselection equation, mothers have a higher probability of leaving permanent-contract© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research89Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Nobuko Nagase

regular employment, while fathers have a higher probability of staying in permanentcontract regular employment when their latest child is young. However, the interaction
terms of the policy period with infants shows that fathers with small children were signiﬁcantly less likely to stay in permanent-contract regular employment during the policy
years, while the effect was signiﬁcant in the opposite direction for females. This meansthat during the policy period, there was a small but signiﬁcant effect in loosening thegender division of labor within households at childbirth, in that more women stayed inpermanent-contract regular employment, while more fathers went out of such contracts.
Table 4 reports the results of estimating an hours worked equation for all workers(including nonstandard employee workers) based on Equation (3). The results with respect
to the reduction in hours worked during the policy period are qualitatively similar to thosereported in Table 3. If we look at the hours worked by parents with infants, we see that thehours worked by mothers with infants are 7.5 hours shorter, and, in addition, during thepolicy period, they are reduced by a further 2.2 hours. The policy effect on the hours
worked by mothers with infants is much smaller compared with what is found forpermanent-contract regular employees in Table 3, indicating that the reduction in hours
worked for parents with infants was more notable for permanent-contract regular employees.
Table 4 also shows a signiﬁcant effect of the Abe Cabinet’s policy of encouraging
married females to work more hours in nonstandard employment where dependent
housewives with low incomes have enjoyed special protection. The regression results
show that a person in nonstandard employment works about 6 hours less than someone in permanent-contract regular employment, and if they are married, they work an
additional 4.7 hours less per week. The estimated coefﬁcient on the DDD shows that,during the 2013–2015 period, the hours worked by married nonstandard employed
females increased signiﬁcantly, by about 0.9 hour per week. It is a small but statisticallysigniﬁcant increase in their hours worked. Abe did not give out the concrete policy
then, but he did ask ﬁrms to start discussions about abolishing ﬁrms’ dependent wife
allowances so that married wives could work longer hours. As we can easily expect, we
see no such signiﬁcant effects for males because most male work hours are not affectedby the minimum income threshold for paying income tax.
The effect of the predicted wage on the hours worked is signiﬁcantly positive forwomen but negative for men in both Tables 3 and 4. Permanent-contract regular
employees, in general, work full time, and their average hours worked was 47.7 and40.5 hours for men and women, respectively, compared to 47.3 and 34.3 hours for all
male and female workers, respectively. For most men who already work more hours
than the full-time standard, their labor supply might be backward bending as the wage
increases.
5.3 A large gender wage gap remains
So far, we have seen some strong results on employment and work hours. However,there is still a long way to go to close the gender wage gap. Table 5 reports estimates ofa wage equation using a sample of all workers where sample selection has been90

© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic ResearchAge
Age squaredType of employment (base self-employed and family workers)
Permanent contract regular employees
Nonstandard employees
Company executive
OthersYears of policy
Years of policy × married
Married dummy
Nonstandard employee × years of policy
Nonstandard employee × married
Nonstandard employee × married × years of policy
Years of policy × youngest child 0–3
Years of policy × youngest child 4–6
Years of policy × youngest child 7–9
Years of policy × youngest child 10–12
Years of policy × youngest child 13–14
Years of policy × youngest child over 15
Youngest child 0–3 dummy

Work hour equation for all type of employees−11.7***
9.40***
37.4***−19.1***
10.3***−6.39***−4.18***−6.58***−14.9***−0.55−55.8***
5.07***−9.10***
1.69*
1.70*
0.41
−0.72
−0.32
−50.4***

4.023−2.236
1.941−5.480−0.476−0.859−1.001−0.077−4.7380.917−2.196
0.328
0.327
0.078
−0.160−0.032−7.500t-value−0.2720.003

Coefﬁcient

FemaleTable 4 Weekly hours worked equation for female and male workers aged 25–54 years

0.509−7.4943.623−3.679−1.0660.444
3.155−0.4302.333−0.239−0.433−0.500−0.245−0.265
0.312
0.309
0.603

0.481
−0.007

CoefﬁcientMale

6.42***−62.6***
33.4***−3.56***−9.49***
4.08***
45.6***−2.21**
15.8***−0.75−2.97***−2.90***
−1.36
−1.45
1.46
3.01***
6.57***

22.0***−24.5***

t-value

Nobuko Nagase
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91

92

Age
Age squared
Married dummyYears of policy × married
Day care places to child ratio (age 2)
Growth rate of child care capacity (age 2)Child 0–3 × day care places to child ratio (age 2)Child 4–6 × day care places to child ratio (age 2)Child 7–9 × day care places to child ratio(age 2)
Spouse’s last year income ( 0 if not married)

Selection to employment equation

Youngest child 4–6 dummy
Youngest child 7–9 dummy
Youngest child 10–12 dummy
Youngest child 13–14 dummy
Youngest child over 15 dummy
Number of children in the family
Spouse’s last year income ( 0 if not married)
Job-opening job-seeker ratio
Predicted log wage
Year 2010–2012 × youngest child 0–3

Table 4 continued

6.18***−7.87***−62.9***
6.88***
8.39***
13.5***
31.6***
24.8***
13.0***−62.2***−34.3***−29.4***−21.4***−11.7***−1.01
10.3***−51.4***−3.60***
45.7***−10.5***−4.086−3.427−2.436−1.433−0.0720.345−0.003−0.3323.976−2.1200.013
0.000−0.328
0.068
0.273
1.423
1.538
1.566
0.824
0.000

t-value

Coefﬁcient

Female0.041−0.0010.968
0.057−0.106
0.743
0.092
0.066
−0.190
0.000

0.652
0.455
0.334
0.039
−0.4720.065−0.0010.959−2.327−0.218

CoefﬁcientMale

14.2***−17.3***
126.2***
4.03***−2.33**
4.74***
0.87
0.46
−1.35
10.8***

6.41***
4.45***
3.25***
0.35−7.28***
2.27**−5.59***
11.3***−36.9***−1.85*

t-value

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?
Nobuko Nagase© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research0.19513.14−3E+06696,260
55,645−0.12612.41−2E+06
724,411
231,106

Estimated ρ1
Estimated σ

Log pseudo-likelihood
Number of observations
Censored observations

Male

1.72*
1.42***
3.90***
4.68***
5.79***−4.91***−2.66***
0.16
1.11
7.34***
17.1***
6.01***

t-value

Note: This table reports the estimates of Equations (1) and (3) together using the maximum likelihood method. In addition to the variables reported in
the table, the model also includes 11 regional dummies, year dummies for 2002–2011 (with 2012 as the base year), and monthly dummies. Work hour
regression with selection correction, all workers age 25–54. ***, **, and * indicate statistical signiﬁcance at the 1%, 5%, and 10% levels, respectively.

0.061
0.068
0.191
0.087
0.122
−0.046−0.032
0.005
0.045
0.037
0.220
0.076

−84.8***−47.3***−23.5***−8.36***
3.22***
7.73***−0.08
3.58***−0.82
36.0***
38.1***
0.09−1.408−0.977−0.502−0.0780.033
0.047−0.001
0.047−0.014
0.101
0.326
0.001

Youngest child 0–3 dummy
Youngest child 4–6 dummy
Youngest child 7–9 dummy
Youngest child 10–12 dummy
Youngest child 13–14 dummy
Youngest child over 15 dummyYears of policy
Years of policy × youngest child 0–3
Years of policy × youngest child 4–6
Number of children in the family
Grandmother in the household
Job-opening job-seeker ratio

Coefﬁcientt-value

FemaleCoefﬁcient

Table 4 continued

Nobuko Nagase
Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

93Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Nobuko Nagase

corrected for. We see that there is a large effect of the type of employment on wages
and also a strong impact of ﬁrm size on wages, which has been a feature that is frequently reported for the Japanese labor market. Compared with self-employed andfamily workers, the wage of females in permanent-contract regular work is 21% higher,
and that in nonstandard work is 7% lower, after controlling for education, tenure,external experience, and ﬁrm size. For males as well, compared with self-employed andfamily workers, the wages of permanent-contract regular workers are about the same,
while that of nonstandard employees are 31% lower. The large wage gap between permanent-contract regular workers and nonstandard employees may be an indication of
the difﬁculty of gaining the former type of job compared to the latter.14 The wage gap
across ﬁrms of different sizes may also be an indication of the narrow port of entry tosuch ﬁrms. For these reasons, the increase of mothers staying in permanent regular
employment is a welcoming change for long-term human capital accumulation. Table 5
also indicates that during the policy years, female wages increased by 3.6%, while malewages only increased by 1.7% compared with the base year of 2012, indicating someclosing of the gender wage gap. However, we still see a large gender difference in
employment structure. In 2015, for married women and for the age group of 25–54
years, 31% are out of the labor force, 38% are in nonstandard employment, 25% are inpermanent-contract regular employment, and 7% are in other types. On the other hand,for married males in 2015 for the same age group, 79% are in permanent-contract regular employment, 16% are in other types, and less than 5% are in nonstandard employment. Our results demonstrated in Table 2 indicate that, in fact, permanent regular
employment has declined even during the policy years for married women even thoughthat of mothers have increased. Table 5 indicates that a large fraction of women earn
low wages, and we see that the overall fraction of such nonstandard workers has
increased rather than decreased.
6.

Concluding Remarks

The present paper analyzes whether or not Womanomics affected women’s employment and their hours worked so that more women with families have better careerprospects. As the wage gap and career prospects between permanent-contract regular
employee and other forms of nonstandard employment is large, we not only look into
employment and hours worked but also focus on whether or not Womanomics
increased the proportion of women in permanent-contract regular employee positionand decreased their hours worked in such employment.
We demonstrate that, during 2013–2015, the increase in the provision of infantcare in urban areas was much faster than in the preceding years and that, from 2014,
the childcare leave allowance was increased from 50% to 67% of monthly income forthe ﬁrst 6 months of the leave.
Our results indicate signiﬁcant and strong positive effects of the policy to increase
the proportion of mothers with infants staying in permanent-contract regular
employees and also staying in employment. The strong growth in the provision of94© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Table 5 Log of hourly wages for male and female workers aged 25–54
FemaleCoefﬁcientMalet-value

Coefﬁcientt-value

0.090
0.262
0.040
−0.0004
0.020
0.000
0.017

45.7***
176.7***
161.8***−56.2***
78.5***−30.0***
6.00***−0.021−0.3200.264−0.124−4.80***−65.0***
52.5***−3.29***

0.151
0.201
0.255
0.358
0.445
0.583
0.611

39.4***
58.1***
75.0***
107.0***
117.7***
172.6***
173.8***

log wage equation
Educational attainment dummy (base 12 years or less)
14 years
0.151
84.0***
16 years
0.316
121.5***
Tenure0.028
90.2***
Tenure squared−0.0003−31.0***
External experience
0.001
3.08***
External experience squared
0.000
6.15***
Years of policy
0.036
10.8***
Type of employment (base self-employed and family workers)
Permanent contract regular employees
0.210
35.3***
Nonstandard employees−0.086−14.6***
Company executive
0.388
41.3***
Others−0.005−0.13
Firm characteristics dummy (base less than 5)
Firm size 5 and more
0.140
30.2***
Firm size 10 and more
0.161
38.0***
Firm size 30 and more
0.184
44.4***
Firm size 100 and more
0.248
60.8***
Firm size 500 and more
0.286
61.5***
Firm size 1000 and more
0.305
73.9***
Public sector employee
0.455
102.8***

Note: Other controls, 11 regional dummies, year dummies, and month dummies. All workers
wage regression age 25-54 (selection correction result not shown). ***signiﬁcant at 1% level, **signiﬁcant at 5% level, * signiﬁcant at 10% level.

accredited infant day care supported the change, and our DD analysis shows that evenafter taking account of changes in childcare provision, a large effect of Abe’s policy
remains for the 2013–2015 period. The effect of the increase in childcare provision was
about the same in magnitude for the increase in the employment of mothers withyoung children, while the effect of the Abe administration on policy other than childcare supply was a little stronger in magnitude in increasing the proportion of motherswith infants who continue to stay in permanent-contract regular employment.
Our DD analysis for hours worked also show that Abe’s policy was effective in
reducing the hours worked of not only married female permanent-contract regular
employees but also married male, single female, and single male employees of the same
type as well. The hours worked by mothers, and also fathers, with infants was signiﬁcantly shortened during the policy period (albeit to a much smaller degree for fathers),
notably for permanent-contract regular workers, indicating an increased use of leave,© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research95

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

Nobuko Nagase

the use of short-hour option, and reduced overtime. These are signs that the work–lifebalance of permanent-contract regular employees, especially mothers and fathers withyoung children, have improved.
Our DDD analysis of hours worked also shows that, during the policy period, thehours worked by married females in nonstandard employment signiﬁcantly increased,albeit by around 0.9 hours per week.
Now, can we say Abe’s Womanomics was a success so far? Our analysis ﬁnds signiﬁcant effects of Womanomics on maternal employment and hours worked. The increaseof new mothers in permanent-contract regular employment not only increases the number of women with better career prospects but also sends a message to the younger generation that their future career should be different from those of their mothers.
However, our analysis also shows that the hourly wage gap between permanentcontract regular employment and nonstandard employment remains as large as 30%
after controlling for education, tenure, external experience, ﬁrm size, and sample selection into employment. It must be that the difference in the hourly productivity of thetwo types of workers is smaller than the wage gap, because the ratio of nonstandard
employment has continued to increase. During 2013–2015, the ratio of permanentcontract regular employees among paid employees was 94% for married males, nochange from the level in 2003–2005, but it was as low as 40% for married females,
which was lower than 43% a decade earlier. For unmarried males, the ratio was 78%,
which was a substantial reduction from the 84% of a decade earlier, while for single
females, it was 60%, down from 65% a decade earlier. In our probit analysis, we ﬁnd along-term increase in the employment of married women, but we ﬁnd no such trend
for permanent-contract regular employment, suggesting that the main increase in theemployment of married women has come from increases in nonstandard employment.
For Womanomics to further work, a fundamental change needs to be made to Japaneselabor practices so that the large wage gap between the two types of employment is reduced.
This would mean giving new entrants and re-entrants to the labor market a better chance ofdeveloping their skills and forming careers. The Abe Administration has realized the importance of this policy. The buzz word of the Abe Administration from 2016 has been a “Revolution of the Way We Work (Hatarakikata Kaikaku)”. One of the pillars of this policy is thegovernment’s attempt to seek to close the wage gap between permanent-contract regular
employment and nonstandard employment by implementing “the same wage for same work”
principle. The deﬁnition of the “same work” needs much scrutiny, however, and the phrase
is difﬁcult to deﬁne when the occupational labor market is underdeveloped, as it is in Japan,
and the labor practice of long-term employees is very much structured, especially in large
ﬁrms, while that for nonstandard employees are not. The gender wage gap within permanent-contract regular employment also remains large at ﬁrms as more males are explicitly or
implicitly hired in fast-track courses, while more females are hired in slow-track courses atthe start of their careers. This is almost equal to promising different training and wage proﬁles for the two genders and keeping low women in management. Such labor practice isagain related to the “long-term employment practice” and the underdevelopment of theoccupational labor market in Japan. In the past, and even today, the government has
96© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

provided tax and social security protection to dependent wives, which in effect has supported gender specialization within households. Although Abe has realized the need forchange and realizes the negative effects of such protection on employment, in the end,
however, in the face of political pressure, Abe did not eliminate the income tax and social
security tax provisions favoring housewives. In late 2016, he rather promised to increase
the spousal tax deduction from 2018. Although some spouses may offer to work longer
hours by taking advantage of this policy, there is a suspicion that this policy may serve todepress the wage rate of nonstandard employment, which would harm those who need toearn their living from such employment. These workers would have to compete withhousewives who can offer their labor for low earnings as the latter can reap the gains fromthe tax and social security system.
Looking at the longer term, many of the Womanomics policies, such as women in leadership, the increase in the number of childcare facilities, and changes in work culture in thework place to accommodate child-caring couples, started before Abe came into ofﬁce in late
2012. The policies to change work culture started around 2003 and sped up in late 2008.
There was a major reform of the childcare provision law in 2012 to include kindergartens
and to give subsidies to kindergartens as childcare institutions. These policy changes provided the foundations for increasing the supply of childcare places/facilities during the Abe
Cabinet during the period 2013–2015. Abe was good in sending a strong message to the business communities and to the national and local governments. Our analysis shows that Abe
was successful in bringing about change in terms of work continuation of new mothers anda reduction in the hours worked by both new mothers and fathers as well as regularly
employed married workers, yet major challenges remain in closing the gender wage gap andpromoting women to managerial positions. It would also be interesting to investigate
whether or not Abenomics had any impact on the probabilities of women getting married
and having a ﬁrst and a second child.
Notes
1 Permanent-contract regular employees refer to employees who are called seishain in Japanese,that is, workers who do not have a ﬁxed-term contract. The Labor Force Survey uses the
English term “regular employee” as the translation for seishain, and employees with all otherforms of employment are called “non-regular employees”. This latter group includes: parttime workers, arbeit (hereafter both referred to as hourly part-time employees), dispatchedworker from temporary labor agencies, contract employees (keiyaku shain), and entrusted
employees (shokutaku). However, the term “regular employee” does not really convey thelong-term relationship presupposed for seishain workers. A substantial portion of part-timeworkers and ﬁxed-contract employees can also be thought of as regular employees in the
English sense of the word as most of them come to ofﬁce daily and have a job tenure of over
1 year. The exact deﬁnitions in English of many terms in the Labor Force Survey are available at the following URL (accessed on 13 September 2017):
http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/pdf/deﬁnite.pdf
2 The survey was conducted with the support of the then Japanese Ministry of Health andWelfare and Yasushi Ohkusa.
© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

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3 The Strategic Meeting for Japan for Supporting Children and Family (Kodomo to Kazoku wo
Ouen suru Nihon Juten Senryaku Kaigi) of December 2007 set the targets for 2012 and 2017at 29% and 38%, respectively while the number was 20.3% in 2007. The percentage ratio ofafter-school child-care places for elementary school children in their ﬁrst to third grades was
19.0% in 2007, with targets of 40% for 2012 and 60% for 2017, respectively.
4 For example, Tokyo’s Minato Ward leaked information to a newspaper that the cost ofchildcare for 0-year-old babies was 7.2 million yen per year per one child!
5 Fathers were also allowed to take paternal leave during the ﬁrst 8 weeks after the childbirthand the second child care leave sometime later.
6 From 2018, this will be extended from 6 months to 12 months if there is a lack of childcare
places available.
7 Firms must collect and publish data from one of 14 options. The data include: data on thefemale ratio of employees, the gender gap in average tenure, the gender gap in applications
to hirings ratio, the monthly amount of hours of overtime, and the gender gap for managers.
Firms are asked to analyze the reasons for the gender gap, and their action plan should havea target and planned period. These plans must be made publicly available and be accreditedwith the local MHLW ofﬁce. For example, the action plan can be in the form of increasing
the number of male employees taking childcare leave or providing model plans for diverse
career paths. The government recognition marks have three grades, and the recognition isbased on the ﬁrm’s present status.
8 To be recognized, the hiring ratio by gender and tenure by gender should be about the samefor both genders; average work hours should be less than 45 hours, and the ratio of female
managers should be more than the industrial average. The ratio of promotions to kacho
managerial positions should be about the same for each gender, and the diversity of career
paths is ascertained by the hiring of seishain from nonstandard employees.
9 The author thanks to Ayako Kondo for her extremely helpful conference comments concerning the model’s speciﬁcation, including her suggestion to include interaction terms
between the child dummy and the day care provision index in the labor supply equation for
married women.
10 Details of the sampling methods, estimation methods, and the sampling errors of the estimates used for the Labor Force Survey are available in English at the following URL (accessedon 13 September 2017): http://www.stat.go.jp/english/data/roudou/pdf/samplerr.pdf
11 There are non-accredited child care places in urban areas where childcare places are insevere shortage, but the number of such places is less than 5% of accredited places in thearea. According to the MHLW 2011 ﬁscal year survey, 78,063 children of ages one and two
attend non-accredited day care, while 2,155,749 attended accredited care as of April 2011.
The percentage of non-accredited care to accredited care is 3.5%.
12 For example, in the Tokyo Metropolitan area in 1997, for children aged four, 60% attended
kindergartens, while only around 30% attended accredited day care facilities. For the Tokaiarea, around 50% went to kindergartens, and 50% went to accredited day care facilities, whilein the Hokuriku area, less than 40% went to kindergartens, while nearly 60% went to accredited day care facilities (see Figure 8–2 in Nagase, 2003b).
13 The question about annual income in the previous year offers respondents 12 possible
answers: 0 yen; > 0 yen and less than 0.5 million yen; ≥0.5 yen and <0.99 million yen; ≥98© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research

Nobuko Nagase

Has Abe’s Womanomics Worked?

1 million yen and <1.49 million yen; ≥ 1.50 million yen and <1.99 million yen; ≥2.00 millionand <2.99 million yen; ≥ 3.00 million and <3.99 million yen; ≥ 4.00 million yen and <4.99
million yen; ≥ 5.00 million yen and <6.99 million yen; ≥ 7.00 million yen and <9.99 million
yen; ≥ 10.00 million yen and <14.99 million yen; and 15.00 million yen or over. When there
is an upper and lower bound, the mid-point in each category is used as the representative
income. For the top income group, 17.00 million is used. Estimates of the wage rate are
obtained by dividing the annual income by the number of work hours in the last week of themonth multiplied by 50. The bottom and top percentiles of the wage data were not used in
the analysis.
14 For example, for workers in the 40–54 years age group, the mean tenure of permanentcontract regular workers is 18.8 years for males and 15.1 years for females, while for nonstandard workers (including part-time, arbeit, dispatched, and ﬁxed-term contract workers)
it is 5.4 and 5.8 years for males and females, respectively.

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Supporting information
Additional supporting information may be found in the online version of this article atthe publisher’s website.
Table S1: Variable deﬁnition appendix.
Table S2: Wage equations used to compute the predicted log wage in Table 4.
Table S3: Wage equations used to compute the predicted log wage in Table 3.
Table S4: Descriptive statistics for the sample used in Table 2 (married females aged
25–54 years).
Table S5: Descriptive statistics for the sample used in Table 4 (male and female
workers aged 22–54 years).
Table S6: Descriptive statistics for the sample used to compute the predicted log wagein Tables 3 and 4.

© 2018 The Authors. Asian Economic Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf ofJapan Center for Economic Research101