Household Structure and Labor Markets in Postwar Japan

Bibliographic Data

ID6079837
AuthorsCarl Mosk (0000-0001-5324-6520, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume20
Issue1
Pages103-125
Publication date1995-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Family History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0363-1990 • E-ISSN: 1552-5473
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/036319909502000105
OpenAlexW2136850449
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited13

While cultural rules are important in determining the structure and size of households in populations, economic and demographic constraints are of equal, if not of greater, importance in determining household characteristics. This paper argues that the demand for labor having certain characteristics (related to skilling, monitoring costs, and the capacity to signal trainability to prospective employers) has played an important role in shaping household structure and size in prewar Japan both through its indirect impact upon the vital rates and through its direct impact on who stays in the household and who goes out on a temporary and/or permanent basis. The diffusion of rice cultivation agriculture and by-employments during the Tokugawa period changed the demand for farm household labor and led to a regime of moderate sized stem family households. Analysis of a data set with economic and demographic data for approximately 1,000 towns and villages circa 1930 bears out the importance of the demand for labor in conditioning household size and structure in prewar Japan

Age structure · Agricultural economics · Agriculture · Demographic economics · Economics · Geography · Labor demand · Labour economics · Population · Sociology · Wage · Demography · Financial Crisis of the 21st Century · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Japanese History and Culture

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