آناتومی جدیدی از روند بازنشستگی در ژاپن

In Japan, retirement is a gradual process that transpires over a particularly long period of time. Using large scale micro-level datasets from the Survey of Employment of the Elderly compiled by the Japanese government, we provide some stylized facts on the development of retirement behavior since the 1980s and explore factors affecting the individual retirement decision. First, we observed a general declining trend in the proportion of retired individuals aged 55–59 (especially females) while the proportion of retired individuals aged 65–69 (especially males) increased. Second, the survival analysis on actual retirement age shows that those who are more educated are more likely to retire earlier and those who experienced mandatory retirement are less likely. Third, the survival analysis on the expected retirement age shows that individuals who are satisfied with their job in terms of nonmonetary rewards are less likely to retire earlier.

Retirement is a gradual process. In Japan, it begins with leave from a career job and eventually concludes with the decision to leave the labor force permanently. The process is lengthy and is affected by a variety of factors including economic, health, family, and other circumstances. The usual starting point in the retirement process is separation from a career job, which in Japan often takes the form of mandatory retirement, increasingly prevalent in recent years encouraged by policies to employ the elderly. According to Survey on Employment Management (Koyo Kanri Chosa) compiled by Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the proportion of firms employing 30 or more workers that had in place a mandatory retirement practice was 60 percent in 1980; the percentage increased to nearly 100 percent after 2000. The most dominant mandatory retirement age currently is 60. If the scope is widened to include smaller firms, the proportion of employees subject to mandatory retirement was approximately 60 percent for males and 40 percent for females in 2000 ( Shimizutani and Oshio, 2010). On the other hand, permanent leave from the labor force is the last phase of the retirement process. In Japan, the average effective retirement age for males is 69.5 years and for females 66.5 years, both of which are the latest ages among OECD countries ( OECD, 2008). It is worth noting that the average retirement age of males is both remarkable in and of itself as well as being higher than that for Sweden, the second highest, by 3.8 years. Seen together, the prevalence of mandatory retirement at around age 60 and subsequent leave from the labor market in the late 60s implies that the retirement process is particularly lengthy in Japan, especially for male workers. The unusually long duration of the retirement process is considered one of the most distinct features of the Japanese elderly labor market and acknowledged to require in-depth analysis.1 However, to our knowledge, evidence for recent development on retirement behavior has been scarce. This study aims to provide new systematic empirical evidence on when and how Japanese workers retire in order to enhance understanding of the retirement process of the world's latest retirees. This study performs three sets of analysis to provide a new anatomy of the retirement process in Japan. First, we present several retirement measurements that show new developments in retirement since the 1980s. Second, we employ a survival analysis to explore factors affecting the actual retirement age that include a variety of characteristics of individual and job status prior to mandatory retirement. Third, we examine determinants of the expected age that current workers will retire. The advantage of this analysis is that it explores the effect of current health condition, job satisfaction and family status on the retirement decision, and thus complements the analysis of the actual retirement age. The paper proceeds as follows. The next section describes the dataset used in this study. Section 3 presents some basic facts about developments in retirement behavior since the 1980s. Section 4 explores factors affecting the actual retirement age and Section 5 employs a similar analysis for the expected retirement age. The last section summarizes our findings.

We should recognize that retirement can be a long, gradual process and the intermediate status which is neither full-time work nor complete leave from the labor force is dominant for the elderly. This is especially the case for Japan since the average duration of the transition process is unusually long. Moreover, the employment status for the elderly depends on a variety of individual attributes and there are a variety of pathways from primary job to retirement. We utilize a large scale micro-level dataset from the Survey of Employment of the Elderly compiled by the Japanese government to provide “stylized facts” on the development of retirement behavior in Japan since the 1980s and explore factors affecting the individual retirement decision. We obtain several findings. First, we observed a general declining trend in the proportion of retired individuals aged 55–59 (especially females) while the proportion of retired individuals aged 65–69 (especially males) increased. Second, the survival analysis on actual retirement age shows that those who are more educated are more likely to retire earlier and those who experienced mandatory retirement are less likely. Third, the survival analysis on the expected retirement age shows that individuals who are satisfied with their job in terms of non-monetary rewards are less likely to retire earlier. This study emphasized fact-finding of retirement behavior over a period of two decades. While the SEE survey has the advantage of covering developments in retirement since the 1980s and is indeed the best available data to explore the labor supply of the elderly, we acknowledge the limitations of the analysis using cross-sectional data. The stylized facts should be investigated again if a longitudinal dataset is constructed in Japan and tracks the same person for more years. Fortunately, a new endeavor on constructing large scale panel data on retirement and health in Japan is ongoing. Titled “JSTAR” (Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement), it is the first “world standard” panel data on retirement in Japan and is a member of the family of the international project on aging that includes HRS (Health and Retirement Study), ELSA (English Longitudinal Survey on Aging) and SHARE (Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe). JSTAR was begun in 2007 and has entered the second wave (Ichimura et al., 2009). This long-term panel data provides unique opportunities to explore the pathways of retirement and their determinants of the Japanese people, who experience the longest retirement process and enjoy the longest life expectancy in the world.