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Delaying Retirement pp 241–268Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Japan: Determinants of Retirement in a Hyper-Aged Society

Abstract

Today Japan is far ahead of the rest of the world on the aging curve of the population and faces unprecedented pressure to delay workers’ retirement. In this national context, workers’ retirement decisions and behaviors are largely determined, at the macro- and mesolevels, by the interplay between the government and employers over reforming mandatory retirement corporate policies thoroughly and uniformly institutionalized across the country’s workplaces, which are set at ages much younger than in most other developed countries around the world. The primary microlevel determinants of retirement include the persistent gender roles, which have still affected many female workers, those currently aged 50 and older in particular, as they are often rendered as primary caregiver for children, aged parents, and the household.

Keywords

  • Pension Reform
  • State Pension
  • Mandatory Retirement
  • Workplace Characteristic
  • Retirement Behavior

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Fig. 11.1
Fig. 11.2

Notes

  1. 1.

    Rourei Kiso Nenkin in Japanese.

  2. 2.

    Rourei Kousei Nenkin in Japanese. Also, public sector employees participate in the Retiree Mutual-Aid Pension Program (Taishoku Kyousai Nenkin in Japanese) instead of the Old Age Employee Pension Program.

  3. 3.

    The 2013 General Survey on Employment Conditions was not conducted on workers in public-sector employment (MHLW 2015).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Masa Higo

  2. Queen’s Management School, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

    Heike Schröder

  3. Department of Economics, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

    Atsuhiro Yamada

Authors
  1. Masa Higo
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  2. Heike Schröder
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  3. Atsuhiro Yamada
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Dirk Hofäcker

  2. Institute of Gerontology at the Technical University of Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Moritz Hess

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Stefanie König

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Higo, M., Schröder, H., Yamada, A. (2016). Japan: Determinants of Retirement in a Hyper-Aged Society. In: Hofäcker, D., Hess, M., König, S. (eds) Delaying Retirement. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56697-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56697-3_11

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