Female Labour Supply in Australia and Japan The Effects of Education and Qualifications
Main Article Content
Keywords
female labour force participation, vocational education, longitudinal data
Abstract
This paper compares the effects of educational attainment on women’s employment status in Australia and Japan from 2005 to 2009. Our data are from the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey and the Japanese Panel Survey on Consumers. Using both static and dynamic models to estimate female labour supply, we find robust positive effects of education on employment in Australia, but not in Japan, where the effects of higher education on permanent employment are weaker. The results of the dynamic estimation suggest that the effect of previous employment status is more significant than that of education in Japan, unlike in Australia. This suggests that Japanese firms value previous experience more than educational attainment. Vocational education has a significant effect in Australia, but not in Japan. This result suggests that the skill acquired from education, in particular, vocational education, is not fully utilised in Japan.
JEL Classification: J210, J220, J240