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W10 – Home Ownership and Globalisation
WOMEN AND HOUSING ASSETS IN THE CONTEXT OF JAPAN’S HOME-OWNING DEMOCRACY
Yosuke Hirayama
Misa Izuhara
Women and housing assets in the context of Japan’s home-owning democracy
W10 – Home Ownership and Globalisation Y. Hirayama and M. Izuhara
1
Women and housing assets in the context of
Japan’s home-owning democracy
Yosuke Hirayama Graduate School of Human Development and Environment
Kobe University, [email protected] Phone/fax number, +81-78-803-7771
Misa Izuhara
School for Policy Studies University of Bristol, [email protected]
Key words: women, home ownership, housing assets, familism, Japan Abstract: Despite the fact that women’s rights have been increasingly defined equally to men’s in laws and policies, the position and status of women have continued to be disadvantaged in many aspects of their social and economic life in post-war Japan. Their ‘housing asset’ portfolio is a case in point. Not only the asset portfolio of women outside the conventional family structure, but that of ‘traditional’ married women has also remained at a low level. How distinctive the Japanese welfare state is in comparison with other industrial nations or in the East Asian context is a matter of debate, but certainly characteristics of Japan’s welfare mix have been its institutional ‘familism’. Indeed, the ‘male-breadwinner family’ model has been the norm and thus the development of social policy has been explicitly connected to such ‘standard family’ model. In this paper, we argue that a wide range of institutional and policy practices – mortgage provision, property ownership, social security, taxation and labour market operation – has effectively combined to define the housing asset status of women. The paper also looks at recent socio-economic changes that began to redefine women’s position in the home-owning society. The key drivers of change include changes in household formation (a decline in conventional households and an increase in others); women’s increased education and labour market participation; destabilized male employment and income; and housing market volatility. A critical question, drawn from Japan’s experiences, is whether or not home-owning democracy associated with the institutional gendering of housing asset accumulation will change.
Women and housing assets in the context of Japan’s home-owning democracy
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Introduction Despite the fact that women’s rights have been increasingly defined equally to men’s in laws and policies, the position and status of women have continued to be disadvantaged in many aspects of their social and economic life in post-war Japan. Their ‘housing asset’ portfolio is a case in point. Not only the asset portfolio of women outside the conventional family structure, but that of ‘traditional’ married women has also remained at a low level. This paper explores women’s access to housing assets in the institutional context of Japan’s home-owning democracy. How distinctive the Japanese welfare state is in comparison with other industrial nations or in the East Asian context is a matter of debate (see for example Esping-Andersen, 1997; Holliday and Wilding, 2003; Peng, 2000; Takegawa, 2005), but certainly characteristics of Japan’s welfare mix have been its ‘familism’ (Osawa, 2006; Takegawa, 1999; Uzuhashi, 2003; Watanabe, 2004). Indeed, the ‘male-breadwinner family’ model has been the norm and thus the development of social policy has been explicitly connected to such ‘standard family’ model. Since the scale of state welfare provision has remained small, the accumulation of assets in the form of residential property has been pivotal in household security (Hirayama, 2003; Hirayama and Hayakawa, 1995). And home ownership has been largely achieved by male heads of the household. Unlike other societies where joint ownership has become increasingly popular (Finch et al., 1997), gendered accumulation of housing assets has been distinctive and persistent in Japan. Housing policy occupies a ‘wobbly pillar’ in social policy in Japan as in many other advanced economies because compared with education, health care and social security, housing is more likely to be provided in the market domain (Torgersen, 1978). However, housing policy alone is not responsible for the current asset status of Japanese women. To take the broad view, various laws and policies – and also absence of them – have combined to produce the current position and status of women in the family, in the labour market and in society as a whole. In this paper, we will largely focus on various areas of policy and institutional arrangements, which have some implicit and explicit concept of ‘women’ as individuals or in the family; how these policies played a role in gendered ownership of residential property. The paper also looks at recent socio-economic changes that began to redefine women’s position in the home-owning democracy. The key drivers of change include changes in household formation (a decline in conventional households and an increase in others); women’s increased education and labour market participation; destabilized male employment and income; and housing market volatility. An increasing number of women with higher employment and income status now own a share of their residential properties. Although they are still a small minority, the ways in which women participate in the home-owning democracy are now beginning to change. Home ownership and housing asset accumulation have long been central themes in housing studies internationally (for example, Forrest and Murie, 1995; Kurz and Blossfeld, 2004). And there has been a growing body of literature on women’s position in various welfare states (Lewis, 1992; Orloff, 1993; Sainsbury, 1994). Existing studies on women and housing, however, tend to highlight their disadvantaged positions (Gilroy and Woods, 1994), and thus research into women’s housing asset accumulation is underdeveloped. This paper, using the case of Japan, seeks to fill in this gap, stressing the importance of women’s home ownership in our understanding of contemporary social process. In terms of methodology, there has often been a tacit assumption that housing is an issue at the household level, and thus the majority of housing research has been conducted among households as a unit. However, this
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paper particularly focuses on the housing asset profile of individuals to overcome such conventional limitation. Empirical evidence of the paper is drawn from a survey conducted among women aged between 25 and 54 in 2004 in Japan. The survey questionnaire covers a wide range of issues related to their housing and assets (including financial assets). Of 3676 samples, which were randomly selected across the country based upon Basic Resident Register not to be biased in terms of age and residential areas, 2205 responded to the questionnaire (60% response rate) (see for full-reports, Institute for Research on Household Economics, 2006a, 2006b). The paper begins with providing a conceptual and policy framework. Various policy and institutional arrangements to construct forces shaping women’s positions and experiences are analysed. It then moves on to discuss the current housing situations of women together with demographic changes taking place for the last few decades in Japanese society. This section highlights significant differences between women in conventional and non-conventional households in their housing asset building. Finally, the paper reviews new trends which are subtle but promoting women’s home ownership. Overall, this paper demonstrates a structural lag between the ‘familism’ model in the institutions and salient forces of socio-economic change surrounding women’s position in Japan – a patriarchal but shifting home-owning society. Women, family and the institutional context The asset status of Japanese women, in particular those housewives who still form the majority in the society, are best described as ‘the ideological ownership of housing without actual legal substance.’ The majority of women typically live in a house owned by their breadwinner husband without their name in the ownership deed. The current asset profile of Japanese women largely derives from the past and existing policies and institutions in various social policy fields. This section investigates institutional factors shaping and constraining women’s access to housing asset accumulation. The close link between home ownership and the ‘male-breadwinner family’ model has been at the heart of Japan’s home-owning democracy. The gender divisions of labour have been clearly defined in the Japanese welfare state, and the development of the home ownership sector has been explicitly connected with the ‘standard family’ model (Hirayama and Ronald, 2007; Yazawa, 1996). The government has encouraged middle-class nuclear households to obtain ‘husband-earned housing’ as ‘family places.’ And public resources were almost exclusively directed towards helping such standard families through state-assisted housing loans and the unique occupational welfare system (Hirayama, 2003). Some specific policies have much more direct interaction with and causes to women’s housing asset building – for example, the mortgage market and lending policy of the financial sector including the former Government Housing Loan Corporation (GHLC); and the employment policy and practice. Contemporary Japan has moved away from the ‘male-breadwinner family’ model which underpinned the foundation of the family based welfare state (Osawa, 2006; Takegawa, 1999) and now moved towards the ‘dual worker model’ in line with the international trend. However, women (or wives)’s increased contribution to the household economy has not yet been translated in asset accumulation largely due to the low status of women in the labour market, the conventional cultural practice (Izuhara, 2002) and also the financial and property ownership mechanisms found in Japan.
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There are other policy areas which could be interpreted as ‘family policy,’ and defined women’s position in their asset building. These offer much wider interpretation of ‘policy effect’ (Payne, 2000). The social security and taxation systems are cases in point here. The ‘preferential’ treatment of housewives effectively reinforces their position as the secondary earners of the household and manipulates their earning-related activities in the formal labour market. The absence of services in the particular fields such as childcare and social care has also been the cause of keeping women at home as carers and domestic workers. In the context of ageing society, while the introduction of the social insurance scheme on long-term care in 2000 ‘commodified’ care work, the expected role of women in caring for older people has largely been maintained. Lending policy and practice Among various housing policy measures, the low-interest loans by the Government Housing Loan Corporation (GHLC) have particularly been crucial for the expansion of the home ownership sector. The GHLC, established as a state agency in 1951, provided middle-income households with long-term, low-interest mortgages for the acquisition and construction of their own home. Their lending policies were not explicitly discriminating towards women or single persons in general, however, certain eligibility criteria were set to screen potential borrowers (Hirayama, 2003). It was as late as in 1981 that the GHLC began to provide single-person households with mortgages, and until 1993 an age restriction existed for one-person households wishing to access public loans. Among single households, public loans were only available to those over 40 years old until 1988, and to those over 35 years old before the age restriction was removed in 1993. The family-orientated loan system is also evident in other criteria: only those who purchased, extended or rebuilt a house larger than 50m2 in size were subject to receive tax incentives, not to mention access to public loans. This implicitly excluded smaller (one-person) households. Also, until 1997, lower ceilings had been used for borrowing limits applicable to single persons. The lending policy of the GHLC was gradually transformed towards including single people. However, the intention of such policy changes was to stimulate the economy in general rather than to encourage the particular group to become homeowners (Hirayama, 2003). Japan’s housing policy has sharply moved towards the accentuating the role of the market in providing and financing housing since the middle of the 1990s (Hirayama and Ronald, 2007). This policy shift led to the dissolution of the GHLC in March 2007, and its successor, the Housing Finance Agency withdrew from the primary mortgage market and will deal only with the secondary market of mortgage securities. With the abolition of the GHLC, almost all mortgages will come to be provided by the private financial sector. Banks and other private financial bodies do not discriminate against women as borrowers. However, women’s access to the mortgage market continues to be narrow since their employment status and thus financial credibility are low. The property ownership system In terms of ownership systems, unlike other societies with the development of joint ownership, post-war Japan has opted for a more individual ownership system. Under the system, a proportion of an individual’s investment is directly translated to a share of the individual’s ownership of the property. Therefore, male breadwinners tend to be ‘sole owners’ due to their dominance in income-earning activity, while their wives have little or absolutely no share of their property. Moreover, in Japan, savings and borrowings are strictly based on individuals, and closely tied to individuals’ own income and credibility, which contributes to the exclusion of women from joint ownership of their marital home and household wealth. Practically, non-availability of joint mortgage means likely sole ownership of housing by husbands. Dual
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earner households need to arrange each separate mortgage to have their contribution recognized. Only those who borrow housing loans and invest in house purchase are entitled to have their name in the ownership deed, unless they obtain housing property by inheritance. The individual property system was introduced in the New Civil Code in 1947 along with the same year enforcement of the new Constitution. The pre-war Civil Code defined the male heads of ie [the (patriarchal) family] as having exclusive authority over the ownership, management or disposal of their properties. Instead, the new Civil Code, which was enacted for new democracy, was aimed at enhancing people’s equal rights. In this context, the individual property system was put into practice to protect individuals’ rights to the ownership of properties including real estates, which was expected to promote gender equality in property ownership. Consequently and ironically, however, the system has produced a pervasive pattern of home ownership. Over the years, the necessity to translate women’s unpaid work into financial terms and thus improve their asset situation has been stressed, but the conventional ownership pattern has been maintained. Inheritance law and practice Despite the New Civil Code defining children’s equal rights to inheritance regardless of gender and birth order, the practice is still highly gendered in Japan (Izuhara, 2004; 2005). Daughters are still less likely to receive housing assets from their parents, and more likely to receive cash gifts to compensate their ‘voluntary’ withdrawal from housing inheritance. In contemporary Japan unlike under the pre-war ie [family] system, inheritance no longer skips widowed mothers. In other words, home ownership could be eventually granted to married women later in their life-course since the longevity of women is generally longer than that of men. However, inheritance received later in their life-course may influence little their consumption patterns and thus life chances as evidence suggests older people tend to retain their assets in old age (Arakawa, 2003). Social security and taxation The notion of the ‘family as a unit’ has encouraged society to achieve high marriage rates in the past since the conventional family structure has always given significant advantages to its members. The system often made women financially dependent on their spouse, thus restricting their choices. The post-war development of the ‘family policy’ system, based on the ‘patriarchal gender relationship’, contributed to the creation of new gender inequalities (Osawa, 1993). On the contrary to the individual based systems of mortgage and property ownership, within a male-dominated social system, social security has been developed based on the ‘family as a unit’ instead of an individual basis. It reinforced gender roles among married couples in order to maximise available resources within the family and to benefit fully from the system. Japanese women therefore had typically gained welfare entitlement not by their own right and qualification, but by virtue of their dependent status within the family as wives and mothers. This mechanism generated an economic ‘bond’ between the couple. Under such system, women alone could not gain access to, and status in, paid employment, social security rights and benefits as equally as men. Instead they tend to make contributions and draw benefits via their husbands, which again contributed to their underdeveloped asset portfolio. The discriminatory tax treatment of dual-earner households discourages wives from taking a full-time job which pays more than ¥1,300,000 (£6,500: £1=¥200) annually. Many married women try not to exceed the maximum earning limit and to stay in a dependent status in order to benefit fully from the taxation and welfare system, and maintain maximum income of the
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two earners. The benefits of a ‘dependent’ status include coverage in occupational-based health insurance and pension scheme. Another example is the ‘Class 3’ public pension category which was introduced in the mid 1980s to reinforce the protection of housewives rather than working women. The intention of Class 3 pension was to eradicate a then large proportion of pension-less women in old age. However, the fact that housewives benefiting without any additional contributions by their employed husbands continues to provoke public debate especially in the context of high-speed social ageing and foreseeable ‘pension crisis’. Moreover, the pension system has now started recognising and protecting women who fall out of the security of marriage given the current demographic shift. Under the 2004 reforms, couples who divorce after April 2007 are able to split the rights to the earnings-related portion of the husband’s pension that accrued during their marriage. The intention of the reforms is to provide financial security to divorced women in later life, though the full promotion of equal opportunity and status in employment for women still remains a contentious issue. Since the ‘family as a unit’ system is employed in taxation and benefit calculations, a married woman who is unemployed can be better off on average than her counterpart who has a moderate career. Japan’s housing system has been characterised by the fact that major corporations have provided their employees with housing related benefits such as housing allowances, employee housing and company housing loans (Sato, 2007). However, such in-house housing assistance targeted mostly for male employees and their family members. Limited access to housing related occupational benefits can be a drawback for single ‘career’ women to secure adequate accommodation on their own. The housing asset status therefore can be highly polarized between married women and their single career counterparts in their old age – asset status of married women tend to become more favourable in their old age when they outlived their partner through horizontal inheritance, although the succession of property assets seems too late for many women to utilise them. Discrimination in the labour market Marriage has been the almost only secure means for Japanese women to access home ownership. This is indeed closely linked to their status and position in the formal labour market. The ‘male-breadwinner family’ model backed up by the notion of ‘family wage’ helped achieve the nation’s ‘full employment’ during the post-war economic growth period. With the improved educational background, women increasingly wish to enter full-time labour force and form occupational careers. The Equal Opportunity Act enacted in 1986 and major amendment to it in 1997 has provided the institutional framework of enhancing women’s entry into the labour market. The female labour participation rate has increased from 57.7% in 1980 to 67.6% in 2005. Even the participation rate of women aged 25 to 34 who used to leave the work force due to marriage and child rearing has been rising. However, the hiring process, employment stability, promotion opportunities and remuneration of women are still far from equal to those of men. Since occupational welfare has played an important role to substitute public welfare provision, employment discrimination has combined with the allocation of family based social security benefits to produce a large disparity of economic situations between women inside the conventional family form and those outside. The labour market restructuring has impacted on the condition of female employment. The bursting of the bubble economy at the beginning of the 1990s triggered the worst recession in post-war Japan. A combination of the post-bubble recession and increased competitiveness in the global economy brought the casualisation of the labour force. The major amendment to the Dispatched Labour Law in 1999 promoted the drastic deregulation of the workforce.
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Such casualisaiton indeed means increasing ‘feminisation of labour force’. From 1992 to 2002, the ratio of part-time, temporary and dispatched employment rose from 7% to 13.2% for men, but from 35.6% to 48.9% for women. In the same period, the rate of regular or managerial employment dropped from 91% to 85% for men, and for women more sharply declined from 62.7% to 48.2%. Demographic change and women’s housing condition Marital status and housing tenure Japan’s housing system to promote home ownership has been implicated in the ‘familism’ institutions for welfare provision, and produced a significant difference in women’s housing situations according to their marital status. Many married women live in ‘husband-earned housing’ as a ‘family place’, while many unmarried women cannot participate in the home-owning democracy. Recent demographic transformations, mainly caused by rising marital age, falling fertility and increasing longevity, have led to a decline in conventional households. This also means that an increasing number of women are now outside the ‘standard family’ model and thus are at a disadvantage in their housing choice. This section, drawing on our survey data, explores the differentiated housing situations between married and unmarried women with particular reference to demographic shifts. The survey data clearly indicate that housing tenure correlates with the age of the respondents – the older they are the more likely they own a house (see Table 1). This reflects the fact that many households climb up a housing ladder towards home ownership over time. The level of home ownership is 31.9% for those aged 30-34, 54.8% for those aged 40-44, and as high as 69.5% for those aged 50-54. Younger women tend to live in their parents’ home (41% for the 25-29 cohort) or private rental housing (32% for 30-34). Many women appear to move from a parental home to a private rental, and eventually to an owner-occupied dwelling. Marital status is a key indicator for their housing tenure (see Table 1). The average level of home ownership, which is 54.6% for married women, is as low as 7.8% for unmarried women. This stark contrast is observed for all the age groups. The levels of home ownership for married women and unmarried women are 51.9% and 12.3% for those aged 35-39; and 64.6% and 16.7% for those aged 45-49, respectively. The data suggest that the majority of owner-occupied women have climbed up the housing ladder not as individuals but via marriage. ‘Husband-earned home ownership’ Many married women live in owner-occupied housing. However, these dwellings are mostly ‘husband-earned dwellings’. In the Japanese real estate register system, the ownership of a plot of land and that of a building on the site are registered separately. In the case of a real estate property owned by two or more owners, the individual property system identifies each owner’s share of the property. Our survey was designed to identify the legal ownership of various properties (detached houses, condominiums, and the land). The ownership of a condominium usually means the ownership of a certain share of the building and its land. As shown in Table 2, 74.5% of detached houses, 75.2% of detached houses’ land, and 77.7% of condominiums are owned by the respondents’ husbands as ‘sole owners.’ The cases in which women have some share of those are low – 20.2%, 20.2% and 20.8%, respectively. This means that many women, who reside in their owner-occupied home, are not the legal owner of the property, and that they actually live in their husbands owned home. Moreover, among women who own a share of their residential property, the rates of those who own more than 50% are low – 16.4% for detached houses, 23.4% for the land, and 23.1% for condominiums,
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respectively. The majority of owner-occupiers purchased or had their house built rather than inherited it. According to the survey data, the male heads of households have played a significant role in financing the acquisition of their home. Of households who purchased or had their house built, 95.7% used a housing loan. And housing loan repayment is almost exclusively responsible for by husbands. The rate of households in which husbands alone are responsible for mortgages is as high as 90%. This demonstrates that the financial credibility of male workers in the mortgage market has been the basis for the expansion of Japan’s home ownership and mortgage markets. There are many cases where wives as the secondary earner of households contributed to mortgage repayments, but they are not formally responsible for mortgages due to their low status of financial credibility and the non-availability of joint mortgage. The rates of households who acquired an owner-occupied dwelling via inheritance are 29.3% for detached houses, 16.9% for their land, and 0.8% for condominiums. The difference of the figures between houses and the land suggests that there are some cases in which houses are built on an inherited plot of land. Almost all condominiums were purchased due to the relatively short history of condominium development. A noticeable point here is that the large majority of inherited properties are in the name of the respondents’ husbands. The rate of women who own inherited properties were equally low – 22.6% for houses and 23.6% for the land. Despite the equal rights in inheritance under the post-war Civil Code, the socio-cultural practice of male succession persistently remains. The expanded private ownership of residential property and a rapid drop in fertility rates mean the increased prospects of housing inheritance in the future. However, inheritance appears not to contribute to women’s housing asset accumulation. Women’s ownership is not materialized until their husband’s death. Unmarried women with limited housing choice Over the past decades, the number of unmarried women has consistently been on the increase, and the concept of ‘standard’ in the family has been challenged. According to the Population Census, between 1980 and 2005, the rate of unmarried women rose from 25.5% to 61.8% for the 25-29 age group; and from 22.0% to 37.3% for the 30-34 age group. The ratio of never-married women at the age of 50, who are defined as ‘lifelong never-married’ in the Japanese statistical term, increased to 6.8% by 2005. The divorce rate is still lower in Japan than in most western countries. However, the rate of divorces to marriages rose from 18.2% in 1980 to 36.7% in 2005. The proportion of conventional nuclear households, consisting of a married couple and their children, decreased from 40% in 1985, to 34.2% in 1995 and to 29.9% in 2005. Such changes are particularly noticeable in urban areas. For example, in Tokyo in 2005, the rate of unmarried women was 43% for the 30-34 age group; the rate of ‘lifelong never-married women’ was 12.6%; and the percentage of nuclear households was as low as 25.9%. As a result, the combination of the family-orientated housing system and the increasing number of unmarried women has led to an inevitable increase in female individuals with limited housing choice. It is difficult for many women to access the home ownership market without marriage due to their often disadvantaged employment status. Since the late 1990s, an increase in ‘parasite singles’ – adult children living in their parents’ home – has drawn not only academic but also popular debate (Yamada, 1999). According to the survey data (see Table 1), the average rate of unmarried women living in their parents’ house is 57.9%. The figure decreases as the women age. However, even in the 45-49 age band, the rate is considerably high at 44.4%. It has been pointed out that ‘parasite singles’ may benefit from advantages such as not having to pay housing costs or food expenses, and that fearing a decline in their quality of life should they become independent or get married,
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they prefer to live for long periods in their parents’ house. The sustained promotion of home ownership has encouraged the current parents’ generation to acquire their own spacious home, which enables the younger generation to ‘parasite.’ Some commentators criticize ‘parasite singles’ for their dependent attitudes, attributing the phenomenon to a cultural tendency peculiar to Japan – parents’ overprotection of their children and the delay of young adults to become independent (Miura, 2005). However, taking the recent prolonged recession and the reorganization of the labour market into consideration, it is reasonable to regard the ‘parasite’ phenomenon not culturally but economically rational. Many unmarried women, whose employment is mostly unstable, tend to have very limited housing choice but living in their parents’ house. A recent survey on ‘parasite singles’, conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (2001), found that many ‘parasite singles’ were not ‘lazy’ but, despite their work, did not have income enough to establish an independent household. In Japan, the private rental sector has accounted for about one forth of the housing stock. Government housing policy, concentrating on the promotion of home ownership, has not supported the development of the private rental sector. There has been little assistance in the construction of private rental housing and absolutely no provision of rental subsidy. This has resulted in a low quality of private rental housing in terms of floor area and amenities. Many unmarried women have sought to secure their housing in the private rental market, but found it difficult to access adequate, affordable places to live in. Furthermore, rental property owners tend to reject female-headed households, because unmarried women, unless they are major companies’ employees, are often seen as not having stable income for rent payments, and moreover, as ‘strange people’ in popular discourse (Sakai, 2003). Major corporations have provided their employees living in private rental housing with rental allowance. However, such provision of rental allowance is often for only male employees. Divorced women have suffered the instability of employment and a very low level of income. The poverty rate of lone-mother households has notably been higher than that of other type households (Hamamoto, 2004; Yui, 2006). In addition, the individual property system has produced a disadvantageous position of divorced women in housing property division with their former husbands. Divorced women, who lived in an owner-occupied home before divorce, tend to move out of the home since they possessed little or no legal share of the property. For many women, obtaining a reasonable share of the property in the court appears not to out weigh its likely financial and social cost. According to a questionnaire survey on divorced individuals with parental authority conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare in 1997, housing tenure change before and after divorce was significantly different between men and women. While the level of home ownership dropped a little from 43.2% to 41.1% for men, the figure less than halved from 29.1% to 11.3% for women. The rate of those who moved immediately after divorce was 27.7% for men, but 71.4% for women. New trends in women’s home ownership Decline in the standard family model Gender biased ‘familism’ has been dominant in the institutional formation of Japan’s home-owning democracy. However, the ‘male-breadwinner family’ model cannot be stationary due to rapid socio-economic transformations. This section looks at subtle but emerging new trends in women’s home ownership. There are three significant dimensions which erode the ‘standard family’ model and potentially promote women’s access to residential property
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ownership. First, it is demography. There has been a continuous increase in non-conventional households, and thus an increasing number of women are now living outside the traditional family model. This has pushed the government to reconsider the ways in which social policies and institutions are formed and operated. An example is the recent reform of the pension system to protect divorced women. This is not to say that the government is beginning to dissolve the tradition of family-focused institutions since the concept of ‘family as a unit’ is deeply embedded in the operation of social policy. However, public policies are now caught between the traditional ‘standard family’ model and real demographic changes, and the sustainability of the model is now increasingly being challenged. Second, the labour market restructuring has destabilized the employment and income of male breadwinners. Japan’s corporate sector, particularly the major corporations, has adopted lifelong employment and seniority systems. The restructuring meant however that an increasing number of corporations have to abandon such practice and replace them with a performance-based system for wages and promotion. It is increasingly becoming difficult for male householders to obtain ‘family wage’ in the context. The destabilization of men’s income inevitably requires their spouses to engage in paid work. Gender equality in the labour market and the improvement of women’s working conditions became an unavoidable policy issue. The third dimension is related to housing market volatility. Housing and land prices rose continuously and rapidly until the bubble economy collapsed, and the lack of housing affordability has continued to be a chronological disease. While the burst of the bubble encouraged a drop in housing prices, housing has not become affordable for many households and housing prices have re-risen in large cities since the early 2000s. In the Tokyo metropolitan area, average price-income ratio for a condominium, which rose from 4.2 times in 1985 to eight times in 1990, dropped to 4.7 times in 1998, and then rose again to 5.2 times in 2005 (Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, 2006). Moreover, public policy to accelerate urban redevelopment in major cities in the context of the post-bubble recession has generated a new boom of the housing market in the city centre, which has encouraged the re-rise of housing prices (Hirayama, 2005). Such a volatile housing market combined with the reorganization of the labour market has made it difficult for households on only male-breadwinners’ incomes to purchase a home. As Japan’s economy has undergone a period of deflation or minimal inflation since the bubble collapsed, the burden of mortgage repayment has become heavier. In other words, wives are increasingly expected to raise considerable income in order to access home ownership. In addition, first time marriage age has consistently been rising. Since most Japanese people acquire and own their own housing after marriage, rising marriage age means a decrease in time that can be used for housing loan repayment. This also requires wives to participate in the paid workforce. Dual earner households A new trend in women’s home ownership has been generated by an increasing number of dual income households where working wives tend to have a share of the housing property. Our survey revealed that the economic status of women correlated to the level of household home ownership and whether or not they had a share of the property. Figure 1 illustrates, among married women, the relationship between various indices about women’s economic status, the level of household home ownership, and the level of women’s home ownership (the rate of owner occupier households in which the wives have a share of the property). The level of women’s home ownership clearly correlates with their employment status: higher for those in full-time regular employment (27.3%) than for those in part-time or casual employment (7.8%), in self-employment (8.4%) and not in employment (1.4%). The duration of their full-
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time regular employment again correlates to both the level of their own ownership and that of household home ownership. For women who worked for more than 20 years, the level of their own ownership is high at 32.1%, and that of household ownership is significantly high at 72.8%. Obviously, women’s full-time employment plays a key role in not only promoting their own ownership but also reinforcing the household access to owner-occupation. Also, income has a strong correlation to home ownership. In cases where women earn more than ¥4,000,000 (£20,000: £1=¥200) annually, the rate of women’s home ownership and that of household’s are high – 47.0% and 67.3%, respectively. It is noteworthy that the level of home ownership by household is the lowest at 48.2% for the group where women earn ¥1,300,000-1,999,999 (£6,500-10,000) annually. The reason behind could be that women in this group seek to earn considerable income over ¥1,300,000 (£6,500) – the upper limit for benefiting fully from the taxation and social security systems – presumably because their husbands’ incomes are low. But their earning not exceeding ¥2,000,000 (£10,000) reflects on the low level of home ownership. The survey data also show that women, who own savings, tend to own their own housing assets, and support their households in becoming owner-occupiers. For women with saving more than ¥4,000,000 (£20,000), the level of their own ownership is relatively high at 23.8% and that of household home ownership at 66.9%. There are likely to be two types of dual earner households. The first is the household with an employed husband and his spouse in part-time or casual employment, and the other is the household with a husband and his wife both in full-time regular employment. Recent socio-economic changes have particularly been translated into an increase in first type households in which wives have contributed to the household economy but their share of the housing property has been small. While second type households have remained minor, an increasing number of women are now seeking to maintain their full-time employment status and their share of the residential property is relatively large. Single career women Many unmarried women, who have been located outside the protection of family-based social policies and institutions, have been excluded from the home-owning democracy. An increasing number of single women in full-time employment are however acquiring condominiums in the central areas of large cities. Matsumoto (1998), analyzing the geographic distribution of single people who own a house in the Tokyo metropolitan area, found that the ratio of female homeowners was high in central city areas while that of male homeowners was high in the periphery areas, implying an expansion of the home ownership market for single women in the city centre. Also, a series of surveys periodically carried out by a private developer identified the growth of the condominium market for single people, particularly women, in the central districts of Tokyo (Recruit CO., LTD, 2005). According to Yui (2004), who investigated the urban condominium market, a structure that supported the growing market for single women was developed for various reasons: an increase in income of women in full-time employment; the tendency of single women to put importance on convenient commuting leading to the growth of a female condominium market in city centres; and finally, single women, being concerned with providing for their old age, increasingly wishing to stabilize their residential situation by acquiring assets in the form of housing. In large cities, Tokyo in particular, developers have sought to expand the condominium market by targeting single women as a new group of purchasers, and increased the production of so-called compact condominiums for single and couple households. While a compact condominium unit is small with a floor space of just 30-50 m2, it is equipped with extreme amenities, fashionably designed and located in attractive or trendy neighbourhoods,
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appealing to urban career women. Some private banks have also begun to provide mortgages specifically for single women in full-time employment. These new trends have reflected the fact that single career women have formed a visible new group accessing urban home ownership. Conclusion A particular form of property ownership has been embedded in the development of post-war Japan’s home-owning democracy, where the majority of women have lived in ‘husband-earned housing’ as ‘family places’ without owning their own housing assets. This paper explored the impacts of various institutions and policies on gendering the ownership of residential property. A wide range of institutional and policy practices – mortgage provision, property ownership, social security, taxation and labour market operation – have effectively combined to define the position and status of women in the property-owning society. Within the ‘family as a unit’ system, many women have sought to secure their housing and life not as an individual but via marriage. Due to such system, unmarried women have suffered from economic insecurity and limited housing options. Over the past few decades, Japan has experienced demographic transformations, labour market reorganization and housing market volatility. These rapid socio-economic changes are likely to erode the ‘standard family’ model, promoting social re-stratification with women’s situations as a key variable. It has been becoming less affordable for single earner households to purchase a house, and thus dual earner households have been on the increase. Households with two earners both in full-time employment are at the most advantageous position in purchasing their own home, where working wives tend to own their share of the property. Many wives have entered the newly produced casual labour market to reinforce the household economy and to access home ownership, although their share of the property has remained marginal. In the central areas of major cities, some single career women buying a condominium have generated a new trend in the housing market. Many unmarried women have lived in their parents’ home, or had no choice but live in a private rental dwelling of low quality. At the lowest end of society, divorced women with children have been distressed with unemployment and a very low level of income, and mostly been excluded from the home-owning democracy. There has been an increased contradiction between the persistency of institutional ‘familism’ and real socio-economic changes in Japan. Despite the apparent decline in conventional households, in marriage sustainability and in the stability of labour and housing markets, the policy framework of advantaging traditional families and the gendered ownership of housing assets have largely been stationary. It is likely that an increasing number of women will be out of the protection of social policies. A critical question, drawn from Japan’s experiences, is whether or not home-owning democracy associated with the institutional gendering of housing asset accumulation will change. Acknowledgement This paper draws upon research on ‘women and assets in Britain and Japan’ funded by the Institute for Research on Household Economics, Japan. The authors were the members of the project team.
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Takegawa, S. (2005) Japan’s welfare-state regime: Welfare politics, provider and regulator, Development and Society, 34(2): 169-90 Torgersen, U. (1987) Housing: the wobbly pillar under the welfare state, in Turner, B., Kemeny, J. and Lundqvist, L. (eds.) Between State and Market: Housing in the Post-Industrial Era, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 116-126 Uzuhashi, T. (ed.) (2003) Hikaku no nakano fukushi kokka [Comparative perspectives on welfare states] Kyoto: Mineruva Shobo Watanabe, M. (2004) Fukushi shihonsyugi no kiki to kazokusyugi no mirai [Welfare capitalism and the future of familism], Keizai Riron [Political Economy Quarterly], 41(2): 3-14 Yamada, M. (1999) Parasaito Shinguru no Jidai [The Time of Parasite of Singles], Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo Yazawa, S. (1996) Jenda to toshi kyoju [Gender and urban housing], in Kishimoto, Y. and Suzuki, A. (eds.) Gendai Kyoju: Kazoku to Jukyo [Modern Housing Policy: Family and Housing], Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 181-206 Yui, Y. (2004) Daitoshi niokeru shinguru josei no manshon konyu to sono haikei [Condominium purchase by single women in large cities] in Y. Yui, H. Kamiya, Y. Wakabayashi and T. Nakazawa (eds) Hataraku Josei no Toshi Kukan [Urban Space and Working Women], Tokyo: Kokin Shoten, 141-168. Yui, Y. (2006) Jenda kara mita jutaku mondai [Gender and housing problem], Kakei Keizai Kenkyu [Research on Household Economics], 69, 28-37.
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Table 1. Women's housing tenure by age and marital status Age Marital
statusOwnedhouse
Parents'house
Privaterentedhouse
Publicrentedhouse
Companyhousing
Others Number ofrespondents
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) N25-29 married 21.4 22.5 34.2 13.9 6.4 1.6 187
unmarried 0.7 65.3 27.9 4.1 1.4 0.7 147total 12.3 41.3 31.4 9.6 4.2 1.2 334
30-34 married 39.3 17.6 31.7 3.8 6.6 1.0 290unmarried 1.4 60.6 32.4 2.8 1.4 1.4 71total 31.9 26.0 31.9 3.6 5.5 1.1 361
35-39 married 51.9 15.9 23.3 2.7 5.3 0.9 339unmarried 12.3 61.4 21.1 1.8 1.8 1.8 57total 46.2 22.5 23.0 2.5 4.8 1.0 396
40-44 married 60.3 17.5 13.4 3.5 2.6 2.6 343unmarried 7.5 50.0 32.5 10.0 0.0 0.0 40total 54.8 20.9 15.4 4.2 2.3 2.3 383
45-49 married 64.6 17.5 10.9 2.5 3.5 1.1 285unmarried 16.7 44.4 22.2 11.1 0.0 5.6 36total 59.2 20.6 12.1 3.4 3.1 1.6 321
50-54 married 73.1 12.1 10.2 1.9 2.5 0.3 364unmarried 33.3 38.9 19.4 8.3 0.0 0.0 36total 69.5 14.5 11.0 2.5 2.3 0.3 400
total married 54.6 16.6 19.3 4.0 4.3 1.2 1,808unmarried 7.8 57.9 26.9 5.2 1.0 1.3 387total 46.3 23.9 20.6 4.2 3.7 1.2 2,195
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Table 2. The ownership of detached houses, land, and condominiumsDetached Land Condominium
houses unitsN=865 N=710 N=130
(%) (%) (%)Respondent only 2.9 3.9 4.6Respondent with husband 15.8 14.6 16.2Respondent with parent(s) 0.6 1.3 0.0Respondent with husband and parent(s) 0.9 0.4 0.0Husband only 74.5 75.2 77.7Husband with parent(s) 4.7 4.1 1.5Others 0.6 0.4 0.0
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Note: The level of women's home-ownership means that of households living in an owner-occupied house of which women have a share.
Figure 1. Married women's home-ownership by employment status,period of regular employment, annual income and savings
27.3%7.8%
16.2%
1.4%
7.4%7.7%
12.3%19.3%
32.1%
6.9%8.8%8.9%
16.8%29.7%
47.0%
3.3%10.3%
16.1%23.8%
58.6%57.7%
62.2%48.0%
48.0%50.1%
59.6%59.6%
72.8%
48.9%57.4%
48.2%65.3%
60.8%67.5%
49.2%53.0%
55.8%66.9%
8.4%55.4%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80%
<Employment status>Regular work
Part-time or casual workSelf-employment
Currently unemployedNever employed
<Period of regular employment>Less than 5 years
5-9 years10-14 years15-19 years
20 years or more<Annual income>
No incomeLess than � �1,300,000
� �1,300,000-1,999,999� �2,000,000-2,999,999� �3,000,000-3,999,999
� �4,000,000 or more<Savings>No savings
Less than � �1,000,000� �1,000,000-3,999,999
� �4,000,000 or more
women's home-ownership household home-ownership
