Table 2. Basic statistics for regression (Data from JSTAR)

Wave 1 (10 municipalities)	Wave 2 (7 municipalities)
No. of obs.	Mean	Std. dev.	Median	No. of obs.	Mean	Std. dev.	Median
Age of head	1,688	63.7	7.18	64	1,260	67.2	7.3	68
Education of head
Junior high school	1,688	0.18	0.38	0	1,260	0.07	0.08	0
High school	1,688	0.45	0.50	0	1,260	0.43	0.49	0
Junior college	1,688	0.09	0.29	0	1,260	0.09	0.29	0
Four-year college or higher	1,688	0.29	0.45	0	1,260	0.18	0.38	0
Family attributes
Married	1,688	0.76	0.42	1	1,260	0.76	0.43	1
Have a child/children	1,688	0.85	0.36	1	1,260	0.90	0.30	1
Have a child/children (junior high or high school student)	1,688	0.01	0.12	1	1,260	0.01	0.08	1
Have a child/children (college or university student)	1,688	0.05	0.22	0	1,260	0.04	0.20	0
Have a child/children (with job)	1,688	0.76	0.43	0	1,260	0.83	0.38	0
Living with parent(s)	1,688	0.12	0.32	0	1,260	0.10	0.30	0
Employment status
Retired head	1,688	0.33	0.47	0	1,260	0.46	0.50	0
Spouse working	1,688	0.32	0.47	0	1,260	0.30	0.46	0
Health status
Bad health	1,688	2.36	1.09	2	1,260	2.52	1.03	3
Spouse bad health	1,688	2.42	0.97	2.5	1,260	1.48	0.73	1
Bequests
Planning to leave bequest	1,688	0.37	0.48	0	1,260	0.26	0.44	0
Received bequest	1,688	0.31	0.46	0	1,260	0.31	0.46	0
Expecting to receive bequest	1,688	0.14	0.35	0	1,260	0.07	0.25	0
Precautionary saving	1,688	0.76	0.43	1	-
Income, consumption, and saving rate
Saving rate	1,688	-0.04	2.38	0.37	1,260	0.03	1.08	0.28
Consumption (million yen)	1,688	2.65	1.47	2.46	1,260	2.33	1.10	2.19
Disposable income (million yen)	1,688	5.05	6.60	4.00	1,260	3.70	3.12	3.07
Home ownership	1,688	0.82	0.38	1	1,260	0.83	0.38	1

Note: "Planning to leave bequest" represents respondents who have a plan to leave bequest and/or give inter-vivo transfers to their children. Spouse bad health is assumed to take an average value for a single respondent.

Table 3. Determinants of saving rate of elderly households (Median regressions)

(1)	(2)	(3)
Coef.	Std. err.	Coef.	Std. err.	Coef.	Std. err.
Planning to leave bequest	0.068 **	(0.030)	0.069 **	(0.030)
Precautionary saving	-0.008	(0.033)	0.003	(0.033)
Bad health	-0.036 ***	(0.013)	-0.036 ***	(0.013)	-0.028 ***	(0.013)
Spouse bad health	-0.010	(0.015)	-0.010	(0.015)	-0.014	(0.015)
Received bequest	0.027	(0.031)	0.027	(0.031)	0.024	(0.030)
Expecting to receive bequest	-0.007	(0.041)	-0.007	(0.041)	0.001	(0.041)
Dummy for retired head	-0.160 ***	(0.035)	-0.160 ***	(0.036)	-0.168 ***	(0.036)
Married	0.137 ***	(0.040)	0.141 ***	(0.041)	0.136 ***	(0.041)
Spouse working	0.051	(0.033)	0.049	(0.034)	0.074 **	(0.034)
Have a child/children	-0.024	(0.063)	-0.027	(0.064)	-0.003	(0.063)
Have a child/children (junior high or high school student)	0.077	(0.120)	0.085	(0.122)	0.100	(0.122)
Have a child/children (college or university student)	0.046	(0.067)	0.049	(0.068)	0.035	(0.068)
Have a child/children (with job)	0.096 *	(0.054)	0.100 *	(0.054)	0.071	(0.055)
Living with parent(s)	0.041	(0.048)	0.039	(0.048)	0.028	(0.048)
No. of observations	1,688	1,688	1,688
Pseudo R-sq.	0.053	0.053	0.052

Notes: The dependent variable is the saving rate. Age and age squared of the household head, year dummies, city dummies, a dummy for home owners, dummies for the educational attainment of the household head (high school, college, or university or higher) and number of household members are included in the regressions. *, **, *** indicate significance at the 10, 5, and 1 percent level, respectively.