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How Reliable Are Japanese Household Surveys?

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Introduction to Japanese Household Surveys

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Economics ((BRIEFSDBJRS))

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Abstract

This chapter examines the reliability of several Japanese household surveys. Reflecting the complexity of household behavior, the same information is collected across multiple surveys. Comparisons here have been made for variables associated with demographics, income, tax and social security premium, and consumption expenditures. Although all of the surveys are designed to be nationally representative, non-negligible differences have been found that cannot be explained by sampling error. I discuss the reason for the differences and conclude that detailed survey practices such as sampling procedure and form of the questionnaire does matter. In addition, to address these discrepancies, I then propose methods to mitigate the biases present in each survey.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Banks and Johnson (1998) discuss the reliability of Family Expenditure Survey in UK.

  2. 2.

    While the CSLC includes students but excludes single-person households who live in boardinghouses, the FIES and NSFIE include the latter but exclude the former. However, the share of such people is negligible and cannot explain the difference in the share of single-person households.

  3. 3.

    Even if an interviewer contacts single-person households at night, the situation may not be better. Since at night visitors may appear suspicious, it is difficult to ask single households to participate in a survey, especially in the case of younger females.

  4. 4.

    For a better re-weighting strategy, it may be advantageous to use the distribution in the JPC, which surveys literally all households, but the JPC is conducted only once every five years, and so it does not capture real-time trends.

  5. 5.

    Regular Employees are defined as those for which contract duration falls into one of the following categories: longer than one month; or less than one month but working over 18 days in April and May. However, this detailed definition is irrelevant since most male prime-age workers are full-time and work under unlimited duration contracts.

  6. 6.

    More precisely, the large scale CSLC was conducted in 1995 and 2010, but each survey wave asked respondents about annual income earned in the year prior to completing the survey.

  7. 7.

    See Stephens and Unayama (2011) for a more in depth discussion of the Teinen system.

  8. 8.

    In the CSLC, a household self-reports who is their head in the questionnaire, while it is described as the largest income earner in the NSFIE and the FIES.

  9. 9.

    Unlike other surveys, no substitute households are sampled when a survey refusal occurs. As a result, the actual sample size is about 20,000 per month after accounting for refusals.

  10. 10.

    As pointed out in Unayama (2011), some portion of the differences in the unit price can be regarded as the definition of the item. While the trade-in price of second-hand vehicles is offset in the FIES, no adjustment is made in the SHE. In principle, it would be better if the trade-in price of second-hand vehicles were recorded as the sale of property, but, in practice, it often effectively functions as a discount and so it would be reasonable to deduct from the price of a new one.

Abbreviations

JPC::

Japanese Population Census

LFS::

Labour Force Survey

ESS::

Employment Status Survey

FIES::

Family Income and Expenditure Survey

NSFIE::

National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure

SHE::

Survey of Household Economy

HLS::

Housing and Land Survey

CSLC::

Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions

STULA::

Survey on Time Use and Leisure Activities

SBJ::

Statistical Bureau of Japan

MHLW::

Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare

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Acknowledgements

A part of this chapter contains the outcomes of a joint project conducted with Koyo Miyoshi (Aichi Gakuin University), Taro Ohno (Shinshu University), Shinpei Sano (Chiba University), and former employees of the Policy Research Institute: Shunji Tada and Manabu Yamamoto. The author is grateful for fruitful discussions with them. The author thanks to David Cashin (Federal Reserve Board), Cameron LaPoint (Columbia University), and the seminar participants at the Development Bank of Japan for their helpful comments. A part of this project is financially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (15H03357, 15H01943, 16H02029).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi, Tokyo, Japan

    Takashi Unayama

  2. Research Institute of Capital Formation, Development Bank of Japan, Tokyo, Japan

    Takashi Unayama

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Unayama, T. (2018). How Reliable Are Japanese Household Surveys?. In: Introduction to Japanese Household Surveys. SpringerBriefs in Economics(). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7680-0_2

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