Japan's Glass Ceiling: An Empirical Analysis on the Determinants of Post-Childbirth Gender Inequality

Abstract

Japan faces the critical challenge of an aging and shrinking population, thereby exacerbating concerns surrounding labor shortages and economic stagnation. Improving the work-life balance for Japanese women is crucial to encouraging fertility and uninterrupted permanent employment. This paper examines the role of intergenerational living arrangements and housing debt on post-childbirth gender disparities in Japan. By employing a difference-in-differences approach that compares male and female outcomes, I find that living with or near parents reduces the gender gap in labor force participation by 0.140 in the year of childbirth and 0.188 in the year immediately after. Furthermore, it lessens the gender gap in weekly working hours by an average of 10.126 hours across the first four years after childbirth. Women with outstanding housing debt also tend to maintain their pre-childbirth working habits more closely than those without. These findings suggest that parental proximity and housing debt burdens are important determinants of women’s post-childbirth employment trajectories, especially for women in permanent positions. Overall, this paper suggests that policies to alleviate time constraints, like subsidies for formal childcare services, are likely more effective in simultaneously encouraging fertility and female labor force participation.