Ryota Mugiyama

Objective: Our study analyses the relationship between employment conditions and non-coresidential partnership status among women and men in two very-low fertility countries: Italy and Japan. Background: Having a partner is the initial stage of any subsequent family formation. Several studies have reported that precarious employment conditions have negative effects on both union formation and fertility; however, less is known about the previous step, namely, having a non-coresidential partner. Method: We use two nationally representative surveys and examine the association between employment condition and partnership status among individuals aged 23–43 who have not yet had children and are not currently cohabiting or married at the survey, employing logistic regression models. Results: Our results suggest that employment conditions do not have statistically significant associations with partnership status except women who have a precarious employment status (i.e. those who do not know their contract type) as well as unemployed/inactive women in Japan and self-employed men in Italy. We interpret our findings as suggesting that in Italy, employment conditions do not significantly matter for starting a relationship for both men and women, likely due to the prevalence of employment uncertainty among young Italians. As for Japanese women, those who are unemployed/inactive, as well as those who do not know their contract type, may face challenges in finding a partner with their desired earning capacity. Conclusion: This is one of the few studies focusing on non-coresidential partnership as the initial step of further family formation.

Abstract Downward trends in class and occupational returns to education have mainly been attributed to educational expansion via credential inflation. However, despite this rapid educational expansion, trends in returns to education vary across societies. This study proposes that changes in population size can contribute to offsetting the impact of educational expansion, controlling for demand-side factors. Using nationally representative survey data from Japan, we analysed trends in class and occupational returns to education at the first job of individuals born between 1942 and 1986. We found that a smaller cohort size increased the advantage of the highly educated in reaching higher occupational positions and upper service class positions, while a higher university graduation rate decreased this advantage. A counterfactual simulation demonstrated that the fluctuation in returns to education was driven by the pace of educational expansion relative to reductions in cohort size. These findings suggest that declining cohort sizes have counterbalanced credential inflation and caused stable trends in returns to education. We argue that mixed trends in class and occupational returns to education can be explained by the different paces of population change across societies.

Preferences of employers have critical roles to determine job-matching processes between the university graduates and the employers. Some researches show that the employers expect self-directedness to the graduates, but these results are only based on the sample of very large companies. This study investigates what types of ability employers demand from graduates, with a special focus on the differences among sizes of companies. Our data are collected from job-search website for new graduates in 2016, and consist of 20,859 companies including large and small companies. We analyze the descriptions obtained from the companies using topic modeling. The results show that large companies and small ones expect different abilities to the graduates. Large companies tend to expect self-directedness and entrepreneurial spirit to graduates. This is consistent with previous studies. By contrast, small companies tend to demand discipline and aggressiveness. These findings suggest that previous studies have overlooked the trends of small companies.