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Older Worker in National Contexts: A Japan-US Comparison

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Abstract

National contexts are crucial determinants of older worker labor force participation. This paper clarifies the main differences between the national contexts surrounding older workers in Japan and the United States. These two countries commonly represent large-scale, industrialized, and mature economies with increasing demographic pressures to prolong the working lives of older adults. Despite the similarities, differences are found between these two national contexts in at least four major areas: (1) the level of demographic pressure to increase older worker labor supply; (2) national labor market institutions affecting employment security in later life; (3) the role of government in promoting older persons’ labor force participation; and (4) the labor force compositions (specifically, the fraction of older workers who are self-employed). Labor force participation rates among older workers are substantially higher for Japan than for the United States. Differences in each of the four areas discussed in this paper help to explain why workers in Japan remain in the labor force longer than do those in the United States.

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Notes

  1. Old-age dependency ratio is a crude indicator of the number of workers potentially available to support the elderly persons in a given population (Schulz and Binstock 2008). OECD (2007) calculates old-age dependency ratios by dividing the population aged 65 and older by the working population (aged 20 to 64) based on the medium variant projection.

  2. Japanese employers’ distinctive mutual networks are often referred to as keiretsu networks. Since the early 1970s, these employer network systems have drawn considerable scholarly attention particularly among sociologists, personnel economists, and those who study international human resource management (see, Lincoln et al. 1996).

  3. For instance, the average duration of unemployment was about 16 weeks for younger people (aged 20 to 34), whereas the figure for the older counterpart (aged 45 to 65) was much longer – over 40 weeks (Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor 2012).

  4. Law No. 68 of 25, May 1971

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  1. Department of Communication and Sociology, University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO, USA

    Masa Higo

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  1. Masa Higo
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Correspondence to Masa Higo.

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Higo, M. Older Worker in National Contexts: A Japan-US Comparison. Population Ageing 6, 305–322 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-013-9090-3

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