Three essays on risks in the middle-aged and elderly in Japan.

摘要

This dissertation consists of three essays on the risks facing the middle-aged and elderly in Japan. In the first essay, using the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement (JSTAR) datasets, a model of health status, labor supply, earnings, and medical expenditures is estimated. Variation in discounted medical cost and net income cost between ages 50 to 80 is decomposed between several shocks, including health shocks, earnings shock, medical expenditures shock, and unemployment.;In the second essay, the "Retirement Consumption Puzzle" is revisited using food expenditure data. It is verified that food expenditures drop at husband's retirement by both fixed effect model and IV technique. Insufficient savings play some role in decline in food expenditures. There is little evidence that retirement allowances help households maintain the level of food expenditures. By examining minutes of housework by spouses together, we infer that food away from home is related to work and thus decreases dramatically at retirement.;In the third essay, using data on labor supply, care provision, and parental health, a model of labor supply and informal care-giving in Japan is estimated. After controlling for endogeneity, little negative effect of care-giving on the labor supply of females is found. Work and care-giving behavior appear to be affected by a common unobservable shock, which may reflect their preferences and their inclination to obey social norms.