Wage Stratification between Care Workers and Non-care Workers in Japan: Evidence from 2001-2017

         
Author Name OKUBO Shoki (University of Tokyo) / KAWATA Keisuke (University of Tokyo) / YIN Ting (Fellow, RIETI) / XU Zhaoyuan (Development Research Center of the State Council)
Creation Date/NO. October 2019 19-E-081
Research Project Economic Analysis of the Development of the Nursing Care Industry in China and Japan
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Abstract

When examining wage disparities, there are two fundamental concepts that must be differentiated: inequality and stratification. Inequality refers to variation in absolute levels, whereas stratification refers to the segmentation of populations into relative ranks. Although there have been several studies on the wages of care workers, many of them focused on inequality. In other words, the wage level of care workers remains mostly unknown. This paper aims to measure how the stratification index of care workers in Japan has changed from 2001 to 2017. The results of nonparametric stratification index (NSI) show little change in overall wage stratification between care workers and non-care workers. However, focusing on the within-gender NSI, the results show that while there is no major change in NSI for males, NSI for females is gradually rising. This indicates that the stratification between care workers and non-care workers is progressing especially for females. Decomposition analysis revealed that the overall NSI in each year was mainly caused by between-gender stratification rather than within-gender stratification.