Silviase/jgov_v1.4_full_ann huggingface dataset:
• 政府は、人口減少克服と地方創生の実現に向けて「まち・ひと・しごと創生本部」を設置し、「長期ビジョン」「総合戦略」を策定。

• 厚生労働省も、検討推進本部を設置し、「まち・ひと・しごと創生サポートプラン」を策定するとともに、各種施策を推進。

## 政府全体の動き

平成26年9月～ 政府「まち・ひと・しごと創生本部」⇒「長期ビジョン」・「総合戦略」を閣議決定

平成27年3月 新たな「少子化社会対策大綱」を閣議決定

平成27年4月 「子ども・子育て支援新制度」本格施行

## 厚生労働省の動き

平成26年10月～

「まち・ひと・しごと創生政策

検討推進本部」

⇒「まち・ひと・しごと創生サポートプラン」を策定

①雇用制度·雇用对策

②少子化对策

③医療・介護、福祉サービスの基盤整備

についての取組方針を示す。

## 「まち・ひと・しごと創生総合戦略」に対するサポートプランの位置づけ

総合戦略

厚労省の方針

雇用制度・雇用対策に関する

取組方針

·地域経済雇用戦略の企画・実施体制の整備

·地方への人材還流、人材育成

·地域産業の競争力強化など

都市部にはない、都市部とは違った魅力ある働き方、生活面でのメリットを提供と実質可処分所得の地域別モデルケースの作成

○地域固有の比較優位性を備えた競争力のある産業分野の選定

○地域や企業が必要とする人材確保のためのマッチング支援、人材の能力開発支援、魅力ある職場作り支援

など

少子化対策に関する

取組方針

・妊娠・出産・子育ての切れ目ない支援（「子育て世代包括支援センター」の整備）

子ども・子育て支援の充実など

☐ 第1子、第2子、第3子の壁それぞれの課題の整理・分析と対策

○施策の進捗と育児のしやすい環境の「見える化」

○各地域の出生順位ことの出生率推計値の分析と他の地域との比較

○施設や入材の合理化・効率化への対応

☐企業等の少子化対策の推進への

さらなる参画

☐先駆的な取り組みの分析と普及など

医療・介護、福祉サービスの

基盤整備に関する

取組方針

中山間地域等における「小さな拠点」(多世代・多機能型拠点)の形成

大都市圏における安心な暮らしの確保など

○福祉サービスの融合。そのさらなる推進と担い手となる専門職種を統合・連携させる方策を検討する省内検討チームの設置

○健康づくりを意識したソーシャルキャピタルの活用やまちづくり

○地域支援事業の一環としての移動支援策

○地域医療連携推進法人や地域医療介護総合確保基金、ヘルスケアリートの活用

など

○地方創生コンシェルジュの任命、活用
• 子育て世代と女性・若者の支援のため、厚生労働省は、①雇用の確保、②妊娠・出産支援、③子育て支援の充実、④働き方の見直し、に取り組んでいる。

## ① 雇用の確保

・総合的・体系的に若年雇用対策を展開。

・非正規雇用労働者の正社員化。

・人口減少に伴う地方の新たな雇用課題に総合的に対応。

⇒「地域しごと創生プラン」の推進

## ② 妊娠·出產支援

・妊娠期から子育て期にわたる切れ目のない支援。

（子育て世代包括支援センターの整備）

・不妊に悩む夫婦への支援。

・姪に対する健康診査。

## ③ 子育て支援の充実

・認定こども園、幼稚園、保育所を通じた共通の施設型給付と地域型保育給付の創設。

・待機児童解消加速化プランと保育士確保プランの推進。

・地域子ども・子育て支援事業の展開。

## ④ 働き方の見直し

・次世代法に基づく事業主の取組推進。

・両立支援等助成金による企業の取組みの促進。

・表彰等により事業主の意識を醸成。

## 待機児童解消加速化プラン

☐ 平成25・26年度の2か年の保育拡大量は約19.1万人となり、緊急集中取組期間の整備目標（約20万人）はほぼ達成する見込み。※保育の受け皿の増加分のみを積み上げた場合の保育拡大量は約20.1万人

☐ 平成27年度からの3か年（取組加速期間）で、約21万人分の保育の受け皿を確保することで、潜在的な保育ニーズを含め、約40万人分の保育の受け皿を新たに確保し、平成29年度末までに待機児童の解消を目指す。※引き続き、各自治体における待機児童対策の進展等に応じてフォローアップを継続していく。

支援パッケージ 〜5本の柱〜

市町村子ども・子育て支援事業計画の期間（2015～2019年度）

賃貸方式や国有地も活用した保育所整備（「ハコ」）

②

取組自治体

③

保育を支える保育士の確保（「ヒト」）

④

小規模保育事業などの運営費支援等

⑤

認可を目指す認可外保育施設への支援

事業所内保育施設への支援
- 人口減少に応じた施策として、①地域包括ケアシステムの推進、②小さな拠点の整備、③福祉サービスや人材に関する連携等の検討、を進めている。

## ① 地域包括ケアシステムの推進

・高齢者が可能な限り、住み慣れた地域でその有する能力に応じ自立した生活を続けることができるよう、医療・介護・予防・住まい・生活支援が包括的に確保される地域包括ケアシステムの構築を推進。

・地域の実情に応じ、在宅医療・介護連携の推進や生活支援・介護予防サービスの充実、高齢者の社会参加の推進等に取り組む。

地域包括ケアシステムの姿

## ② 小さな拠点の整備

・地域の福祉ニーズに対応した多世代交流・多機能型福祉の拠点作りの推進。

⇒①居場所機能（主に自立度が高い人が利用）

②共生サービス機能（主に支援が必要な人が利用）を提供

## ③福祉サービスや人材に関する連携等の検討

・高齢者・障害者・子ども等、対象者に関わらず相談支援等を包括的に行う仕組みや、これらに必要な福祉人材の育成などについて検討。

・世代や抱える課題を問わず、全ての人が住み慣れた地域で安心して暮らし続けられる地域作りを目指す。
## 参考

## 本白書での事例紹介（コラム）

## ■第1部「人口減少社会を考える～希望の実現と安心して暮らせる社会を目指して～」

## ・序章 人口減少の見通しとその影響

国立社会保障・人口問題研究所(将来推計人口等の取組み)

## · 第 1 章 人口减少社会

明治大学(大学における「婚育」講義)、兵庫県・茨城県(自治体による婚活支援)、

世田谷区太子堂なごみ保育園(地域とのつながりの中で子どもを育む)、福井大学(高い地元就職率を誇る大学の取組み)、

北海道伊達市(移住者誘致の取組み)、富山県富山市(コンパ外シティ化の推進の取組み)、

長野県飯田市・下條村（定住自立圏形成の取組み、地方での出生率向上・人口維持の取組み）

## ・第2章 人口減少克服に向けた取組み

三重県名張市(妊娠・出産包括支援「名張版ネウボラ」の取組み)、

京都府京都市(特色ある取組みによる待機児童ゼロの達成)、

福岡市保育士・保育所支援センター(保育士就労支援の取組み)、

有限会社COCO—LO(均等・両立推進企業表彰受賞／従業員の両立支援の取組み)、

アースクリエイト有限会社(イクメン企業アワード2014受賞／男性従業員の育児と仕事の両立支援の取組み)、

福井県（高い出生率と県独自の少子化対策）、

明治安田生命保険相互会社(地域を見守る社会貢献活動)、

高知県あったかふれあいセンター（地域福祉の拠点整備の取組み）

## ■第2部 現下の政策課題への対応（年次行政報告）

兵庫県明石市(独自の子ども養育支援の独自の取組み)、

地域若者サポートステーション佐賀(若者の職業的自立を支援)、

昭和館・しょうけい館(戦中・戦後の労苦を次世代に伝える施設)
ESRI Discussion Paper Series No.33

Wage Determinants and Age Profiles in the Japanese Child Care Industry: Evidence from Employee-level Data

by

Haruko Noguchi, Satoshi Shimizutani, and Wataru Suzuki

May 2003

Economic and Social Research Institute

Cabinet Office

Tokyo, Japan
# Wage Determinants and Age Profiles in the Japanese Child Care Industry: Evidence from Employee-level Data $ ^{1} $

By

Haruko Noguchi, Satoshi Shimizutani, and Wataru Suzuki

May 2003

Please address correspondence to:

Haruko Noguchi, Toyo-Eiwa University, Yokohama, Japan

Email: hnoguchi@newage3.stanford.edu

Satoshi Shimizutani, Cabinet Office, Tokyo, Japan

Email: satoshi.shimizutani@esri.cao.go.jp

Wataru Suzuki, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

Email: suzuki@osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp
## Abstract

This study is the first comprehensive empirical assessment on wage determinants of child care workers in Japan. In particular, this paper focuses on the sectoral wage differentials among publicly owned and licensed private facilities and the wage-age profile among different types of management. To address these topics, we take advantage of a unique, large, and high-quality employer-employee matched survey data set on child care workers collected in the summer 2002.

We present four major empirical findings. First, we found adjusted hourly wage d are higher at public centers by 19.3 percentage points (355 yen in real value) compared to the private centers. Second, regular workers who are male, older, more experienced, and who have higher degrees of education and qualifications tend to have higher wages, while a similar profile is not significantly correlated with non-regular workers' wage rates. Thus, we can conclude that the age and experience wage profile for regular workers in the child care market strongly reflects the seniority system in Japan. At the same time, differences in the wage-age profile could not be attributed wholly to differences in types of management. Third, the rates of increases in return for workers' human capitals are diminishing much faster in private centers than the ones in public facilities. The magnitudes of diminishing rates in the public sector are negligible, while the diminishing rates in private facilities are not insignificant. Finally, employment status also has a large effect on the wage profile. Both regular and non-regular employees with long hours of work enjoy enormously higher wages than non-regular workers with shorter work hours. The result might be partially accounted for by the implications of human capital such that they are valued for regular workers, but not appreciated for non-regular workers in the labor market.

We conclude that much higher wage levels and steeper age-wage profile in public centers cannot be justified unless such high costs are closely related with higher quality of care in the public sector. That might not be the case, however, since we observe smaller differences in the age profile for non-regular workers in both sectors.
### 1. Introduction

This study is the first comprehensive empirical assessment on the determinants and profiles of child care worker wages in Japan, an area that has been heretofore unexplored.

It is well known that Japanese households with preschool children suffer harshly from an insufficient supply of child care, especially in urban areas $ ^{2} $ . The current cabinet places top priority on maximally decreasing the enormous number of children on waiting lists. The most important policy issue in the area of child care in Japan is to increase the child care supply dramatically. However, it is not easy to increase the number of child care centers while running huge fiscal deficits in both the central and local governments (Cabinet Office (2003)). Therefore, it is critical to cut costs and to improve the efficiency of management in the incumbent child care centers.

The strict entry regulations and high costs are often considered to be responsible for the undersupply, which are true for public-owned facilities. Although both for-profit and nonprofit centers have been operating, not-for-profit centers have been rather dominant in the sector, which includes both public-own and licensed private nonprofit centers mostly run via social welfare cooperation. They are approved by local governments and enjoy preferable treatments through subsidies. On the other hand, for-profit facilities are not licensed; most of them are small in size and managed by individuals. In 2000, the Japanese government began to encourage private companies to enter the licensed child care market, but the number of child care centers operated by private firms is still small.

Since child care is labor intensive, higher supply costs are largely attributed to higher wages. This is particularly true for workers in the public-owned facilities. Their wages follow the seniority system, which is the same for general officials in local government. Their higher wages could be justified if the quality of services is higher in public-owned centers, but Noguchi, Shimizutani, and Suzuki (2003a) demonstrate that this is not the case. Such high wages are possible because public centers receive significant
subsidies from the central government and from local governments. Child care payments made by parents are supposed to cover half of the operational costs of the child care centers, but in reality, charge for care is much smaller than subsidy (Cabinet Office (2003)). The amount of subsidy is based on the assumption that the experience of a child care worker is about five years; that is, that they are less than 30 years old. Licensed private nonprofit facilities also receive subsidies, but public centers are entitled to receive significant additional subsidies from local governments to compensate for their costs, which would enable higher wages for care workers in public centers.

Surprisingly, these “facts” have never been investigated by any real data set. Thus, empirical research on wage determination and profiles along with age and experience in the market seem to be urgently needed to improve the efficiency of child care management and to break through the bottleneck of child care supply.

This paper investigates what determines the wages of child care workers in Japan. It uses the simple Mincerian type semi-logarithmic wage equation frequently used in the context of labor economics. In particular, this paper focuses on the sectoral wage profiles, but also looks at age and market experience between publicly owned and private child care centers licensed by local governments. We present the wage-age profiles for Japanese child care workers in different affiliations, an area that has not yet been explored. We then discuss the rationale for the steep wage curve for workers in public sectors compared with licensed private nonprofit facilities and employment status $ ^{3} $ . When investigating the rationale, we consider the differences in both employees’ and facilities’ characteristics in different types of management and also the differences in regular and non-regular workers.

To address the questions we proposed above, we take advantage of unique and high-quality data with the largest sample, collected in the summer of 2002, which contains 16,735 child care workers from 1,382 centers (7,102 from 687 public licensed centers; and 9,633 from 695 licensed private centers). Such an abundant employer-employee matched dataset on child care workers has not been available in Japan. Thus, our empirical research
on this data set is the first to contribute to the empirical labor literature by analyzing unexplored wage determinants and shedding light on unsolved policy issues to reduce Japan’s huge labor costs.

This paper is organized as follows. The next section briefly reviews some previous research on the wage determinants of child care workers. Section 3 describes the empirical specifications to be used in this paper and the data for our empirical work. Section 4 presents and discusses the results and effects of the subsidy policy that targets 30 year-old workers as a base. The last section concludes.

### 2. Previous Research

Despite its practical importance, there is little research on the wage determinants of child care workers in the social welfare sector in Japan. This is partly explained by the unavailability of micro-level data on wages and employees' characteristics, both of which are crucial for evaluating wage differentials after controlling for the characteristics of employees and facilities. To our knowledge, this study represents the first comprehensive research on the wage determinants of child care workers in Japan. Therefore, we must continue our literature review to studies conducted in the United States, though few studies on the wage determinants of child care workers exist even there.

Two studies should be mentioned on wage determination of child care workers. The first paper, explored by Blau (1992), was the first study to use nationally representative data in the United States. He takes advantage of a nationally representative sample of more than 4,000 child care workers to investigate the characteristics of care workers and wage determination. His estimates on wage determinations show no significant wage variation by age, race, SMSA, and, for private household workers, teachers and education. As for the wage age profile, wages do not increase along with age, suggesting that productivity does not increase with experience. Moreover, he reports that government subsidies or regulations do not affect child care workers' wages, which suggests that the supply of child care labor
is relatively inelastic. Relative wages of child care workers to those of other workers and relative wages of different classes of child care workers did not change between 1976 and 1986, when government subsidies increased. In addition, he finds some differences across child care centers in returns to education: non-household workers received positive returns, but this is not the case for private household workers or teachers.

The second study is Mocan and Viola (1997). They also performed comprehensive research on wage determinants of child care workers. They use detailed firm-level data from 398 daycare centers in four states. First, they find that return to additional years of tenure, prior experience, and general education have slightly positive effects on wages, yet the magnitude of the effects are significantly different between teachers and assistant teachers. Second, they report that unionization affects wages and compensation for teachers and aides, and that specialized training and center size have positive impacts on teacher wages. Moreover, they demonstrate that sector affiliation between nonprofit and for-profit status does not affect the difference in wage or non-wage compensations, and that the premium depends on category of nonprofit centers, worker's occupation, and race.

There are several other studies on child care worker’s wages, focusing on the nonprofit wage premium. Using center-level data from the 1976-1977 National Day Care Center Supply Study, Preston (1988) focuses on the sectoral wage differences between nonprofit and for-profit centers. She performs a cross-sectional regression and finds a five to 10 percent nonprofit wage premium in the daycare market, which is less competitive due to federal regulations. In addition, Mocan and Tekin (2000) explore the wage differentials between for-profit versus nonprofit and full-time versus part-time. They use a discrete factor model to investigate the wage premium and find part-time workers receive more benefits. Also, they indicate the existence of the premiums, which support the property rights hypothesis, though the labor donation hypothesis is not also rejected. As for Japanese child care workers, Noguchi, Shimizutani, and Suzuki (2003) is the first and only micro-based study to investigate the determinants of wage differences between profit and non-profit child care centers in Japan, under the condition that both types of facilities receive government subsidies. They found the same consistent results that previous studies
had, which completely support the property rights hypothesis. The findings demonstrate that a nonprofit wage premium was clearly observed in Japan’s child care industry due to the higher value placed on senior employees working in higher-volume centers with longer market experience, higher degree of education, and better qualifications among the nonprofit firms.

### 3. Empirical Specification and Data

The empirical specification in this paper is simple and straightforward. We use the following Mincerian type semi-logarithmic wage equation frequently used in the labor literature.

$$ \ln\mathrm{W}_{\mathrm{i}}=\mathrm{X}_{\mathrm{i}}\beta+\mathrm{D}+\tau_{\mathrm{i}} $$

$ \ln W_{i} $ indicates a natural logarithm value of $ i^{th} $ worker's wage rate. $ X_{i} $ includes various factors determining the $ i^{th} $ worker's wage rate, such as human capital characteristics. To examine wage profiles along with years of age and market experience, we will in particular focus on the effects of the squared values of these on wage rates. Also, note that all regressions contain area and facility dummies as explanatory variables. $ \beta $ is a parameter to be estimated. $ \tau_{i} $ shows unobservables that would influence his or her wages.

D is included as an indicator variable for public status to test wage differences by type of management. However, when describing the wage age profiles, we estimate this equation separately and do not include the term, since it is implausible to assume that the steepness is the same for all types of child care management.

The empirical analysis of this study is based on the unique survey on child care centers conducted by the Price Policy division of the Cabinet Office of the Japanese government in the summer of 2002. This data is, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive
survey on child care workers with the largest sample size. Such a large data set has never been available, which seriously hampered in-depth research on child care workers. We were able to perform the survey with special cooperation and deep understanding by local governments.

Before the survey, we visited several local governments, including that of Tokyo Prefecture, to ask their cooperation in the survey. We explained the purpose of our research and consulted with officials in charge of child care policies at local governments. We asked them to read the detailed questionnaire, to consider the feasibility of each question, and to be precise in their responses.

The sample of the survey contains child care centers located in 729 municipal areas of ten prefectures in the Kanto Area; Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Shizuoka, Yamanashi, Nagano, Gunma, Tochigi, and Ibaragi. Of the 729 districts, we collected data from the 533 local governments. The response rate of 73.1 percent is remarkably high; the figure would be even higher if we removed some local governments with no child care centers in the administrative regions. Local governments collaborative to the survey provided rich information on child care facilities within the area, such as management type, size, service contents, and equipment. Moreover, they collected detailed information on all child care workers in each facility, from 20 percent of public centers and 40 percent of licensed private facilities by individual local government, which were randomly selected $ ^{4} $ . The sample size is 16,735 child care workers from 1,382 centers containing 7,102 (42.4 percent) from 687 public licensed centers; and 9,633 (57.6 percent) from 695 licensed private centers $ ^{5} $ . This structure of the data set enables us to match employer and employees in each child care center and thus to study nonprofit wage premiums while controlling for various facility-related factors.

Table 1 describes some basic statistics of major characteristics of both employees and facilities that could affect child care worker wage profiles in public and private centers.
This table demonstrates significant sectoral differences even within the not-for-profit sector. The difference in mean wages is higher for public facilities by up to about 30 percentage points than for private centers all in hourly, daily, and monthly wages. For example, mean hourly wages are, remarkably, 30.9 percent higher in publicly owned facilities (1,837 yen in public-owncenters and the mean wage is 1,284 yen in private centers) $ ^{6} $ . In contrast, mean working days and hours per day are not seen to be significantly different between public and private child care facilities workers. Since our dataset does not contain information on non-wage benefits such as insurance or professional training, we cannot evaluate the effects of various factors on non-wage compensations such as those that Mocan and Viola (1997) performed.

We observe large differences in worker characteristics. Both mean age and market experience are much higher for public centers (mean age is 37.0 and mean years of experience is 12.9) than for private centers (mean age is 31.4 and mean years of experience is 7.2). Publicly owned facilities are inclined to hire more experienced workers than private centers. This fact reflects the age composition of each type of facility. Private facilities tend to hire child care workers in their twenties, whose share occupies more than 50 percent of total workers, while public sectors employ more workers in their thirties, forties, and fifties. Regarding educational backgrounds and qualifications, employees in both sectors are seen to be homogeneous. Both public and private centers are inclined to hire two-year community college graduates, who occupy 64.4 to 69.0 percent of the entire worker pool, and to employ more qualified workers, whose share is more than 90 percent. Regarding worker status, the share of regular workers is slightly higher at private (84.9 percent) than at publicly owned centers (79.3 percent), while that of non-regular status with both long and short hours of work is slightly higher (by five percentage points) at publicly owned centers. Unfortunately, we do not have information on marital and family status, which was
controlled for in previous works as proxy indicators for employee stability $ ^{7} $ .

Next, we focus on the difference in facility-related characteristics. Publicly owned child centers have a longer history of operation than private centers. As for land tenure, public facilities use public tenured land by local governments; more than 80 percent of private counterparts use land own by social welfare cooperation or rent land from them. That implies that the fixed costs of private centers might be higher than those in the public sector. Private care centers (83.5 percent) are more likely to introduce a flexible capacity system than public centers (61.4 percent) are. All types of special care, except for disabled children, tend to be provided more aggressively at private centers than at public centers. For example, the share of providing extra hours of care is much higher at private facilities (81.2 percent) than in the public sector (52.9 percent); in holiday child care, temporary care, child education service, as well as the share of providing holiday care, nighttime care, temporary care, post acute care, and special education programs. However, the hours of additional operation are not seen to be different among these centers. The larger share of providing special care for extra hours reflects the longer hours of operation of private centers, by about 0.06 hours. Put differently, private child care centers are seen to play a complementary role to public centers, which provide standard day-time care services.

In sum, the description of the basic statistics reveals that workers in public centers enjoy much higher wages than employees in private facilities do. As for worker characteristics, public facilities are clearly advantageous in worker age and market experience, yet they are liable to be homogeneous with respect to education, qualification, and regular status. Regarding facility characteristics, private centers enjoy minor larger firm sizes and more aggressively provide various types of additional care than public centers do. On the other hand, publicly owned child centers enjoy a relatively long history of operation, and use publicly owned land, which might lead to lower fixed costs for operation than those of private-management centers.

To examine the effects of these factors on wage determination, we first run a simple Mincerian type semi-logarithmic human capital wage function for a pooled full