Abstract
Japan is famous for long working hours. For decades the Japanese government has tried to influence how people spend their free time. In 5-yearly surveys since 1986 the government has surveyed “quality of life,” gauging how much time people spend daily in various activities, including “leisure.” Analyzing results from these time use surveys, from 2006 back to 1986, and controlling for labor market conditions, this study determines whether time spent on leisure activities has actually changed. Gains in some types of leisure have been fleeting. Yet in other respects leisure has been enhanced, with significant increases occurring in active recreational pastimes. Nevertheless, leisure remains elusive for mid-career employees. Moreover, there is a pronounced gender gap for leisure time.
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Notes
Omata et al. (2001) studied leisure for a sample of 103 workers at two firms in one city. Because this study analyzes a national survey of time use, its findings are more general.
The enumeration districts are the same ones used in conducting Japan’s regular (five-yearly) census of the population.
Details of the 2006 survey can be found in the “Outline” provided by the government’s Statistics Bureau (2006, vol. 1, pp. 17–29), which defines terms, discusses survey procedures, and details the various time use categories. Results from the 2006 time use survey, as well as the earlier time use surveys, are reported in the Japan Statistical Yearbook (for details see appendix).
When a respondent was engaged in more than one activity at the same time, the respondent reported the one activity that (s)he considered to be the main one. Time spent simply on rest/relaxation—that is, time spent doing nothing in particular—has not been categorized as leisure and is not part of this study. Because the focus here is on leisure in daily life, vacation time is not part of this study either.
Figures for working time are reported by Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and can be found in its Year Book of Labour Statistics (see Appendix for details).
For teenage males—likewise females—I merged work results for the “<17” group with the leisure data for the “15–19” group; similarly, work data for the “18–19” group were merged with leisure figures for the “15–19” group. I merged work and leisure data for the “20–24”, “25–29”, “30–34”…, “50–54”, “55–59”, and “60–64” groups. For the “65+” work group, I used leisure observations for the “65–69” age group.
Saturdays were once “half days” in offices and schools but practices are evolving. Since the early 1990s firms have been urged to reduce/phase out Saturday working hours and school on Saturday has been discontinued. The time use surveys report data for weekdays (Monday–Friday) and Sundays, which is the distinction used in this study.
The earnings figures are nominal. In the regression analysis below I used real scheduled earnings and bonus pay, with nominal figures deflated by the consumer price index.
The White test indicates whether residual variance is constant, and so is a non-parametric approach to testing and correcting for heteroscedasticity. An anonymous referee suggested a parametric approach, proposing that error variance was related to cell size, meaning the use of weighted least squares (WLS). As a check on the results reported in Tables 4 and 5, I estimated WLS regressions, presuming error variance was inversely related to cell size. None of the main conclusions was affected; indeed, the WLS coefficient estimates were very similar to those reported below. Because the WLS results were so similar, I reported only the estimates generated with OLS and White’s correction. The WLS estimates are available on request.
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Acknowledgments
An earlier draft of this study was presented in Bonn, Germany during the IZA conference on “Nonmarket Time in Economics.” Thanks to Daniel Hamermesh, Christine Emerson Marston, Leila Pratt, and James Schmidt for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts. Prior to availability of the 2006 “Time Use” data, a working paper version of this study focusing only on 1986–2001 was included as part of the IZA Discussion Paper series.
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Appendix
Appendix
Time use data for 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006 are available in the Japan Statistical Yearbook (published in Tokyo by the government’s Statistics Bureau). The 2001 figures come from the 2004 Yearbook; the 1996 data are from the 2001 Yearbook; the 1991 data are from the 1997 Yearbook; the 1986 figures are from the 1992 Yearbook; for each Yearbook the data can be found in the table entitled “Time Spent per Day on Leisure Activities and Participation Rate by Age Group and Day of the Week.” The 2006 data come from the 2010 Yearbook, from the table entitled “Participation rate in Major Leisure Activities and Average Time Spent by the Participants by Age Group and Day of the Week.”
For 1986 and 1991, instead of reporting time use figures for the 15–19, 20–24, 25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, 45–49, 50–54, 55–59, 60–64, and 65–69 age groups, the government reported numbers for the 15–19, 20–24, 25–29, 30–39, 40–49, 50–59, 60–64, and 65–69 age groups. To maintain a consistent number of cells across the years, for the 1986 and 1991 observations I attributed to the 30–34 and 35–39 cells the time use figures at hand from the 30–39 cell, and so on for the 40s and 50s cells.
Working life data can be found in the Year Book of Labour Statistics (published in Tokyo by the government’s Ministry of Labour). Specifically, observations for 2006 are in the 2006 Year Book; similarly, data for 2001, 1996, 1991, and 1986 are from the 2001, 1996, 1991, and 1986 Year Books, respectively. For 1986 the observations come from the table entitled “Average Age, Duration of Service, Monthly Hours Worked, Monthly Contractual Cash Earnings and Annual Special Cash Earnings, and Estimated Number of Employees by Industrial Group, Size of Enterprise, and Type of Regular Employees, Sex and Age.” For 1991, 1996, and 2001 the table is entitled “Average Age, Length of Service, Number of Working Hours, Contractual Cash Earnings, Scheduled Earnings and Special Cash Payments and Number of Employees, by Industry, Size of Enterprise, Sex, Type of Regular Employees and Age Group.” For 2006 the table is called “Contractual Cash Earnings, Scheduled Earnings and Annual Special Earnings by Industry, Size of Enterprise, Sex, Type of Workers and Age Group.”
Unemployment and labor force participation figures are from the Year Book of Labour Statistics. Observations for 2006 are from the 2006 Year Book. Data for 2001 are from the 2002 Year Book; data for 1996, 1991, and 1986 are from the 1998, 1994, and 1990 Year Books, respectively. The 2006 figures are from a table entitled “Population 15 Years Old and over by Labour Force Status, Sex and Age Group.” For the other years, the table title is “Population Aged 15 and over by Labour Force Status, Sex, and Age Group.”
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Fuess, S.M. Leisure in Japan, 1986–2006: A Revival?. J Fam Econ Iss 33, 250–260 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-012-9305-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-012-9305-4