Associations between Household Income, Parental Education and Adolescents Study Time in Japan between 1996 and 2006

Ekaterina Hertog , University of Oxford
Shohei Yoda, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research
Takehiko Kariya, University of Oxford

A growing body of research has investigated the increasing socio-economic bifurcation in parenting behaviours across Western developed countries. This paper builds on this research to analyse how natal family characteristics translate into educational (dis)advantage in late adolescence as children do (or do not) prepare for tertiary education in Japan. Our paper contains the first-ever analysis of longitudinal trends in the associations between natal family household income, parents’ education, parents’ time availability and adolescent study time in Japan between 1996 and 2006. We use micro-data of the Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities (STULA), conducted in 1996, 2001, and 2006 by Statistical Bureau Japan to show that adolescents’ study time was much more similar across households with different income levels in the mid-90s compared to the mid-2000s. Similarly, parental education levels had a much weaker association with children’s study time in the mid-90s compared to 2006. The income and education effects are independent of each other and the results are robust in models where we interact household income with father’s and mother’s education. Our research suggests that Japan is following global trends in which socio-economic characteristics of natal families lead to an increasing differentiation of children’s educational efforts. This is likely to have long-term consequences for inter-generational social mobility and reproduction of social disadvantage.

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 Presented in Session P1. Poster Session Fertility, Family and the Life Course