A Multi-Level Analysis of the Effect of Age on the Female Employment Rate in Japan and Taiwan

Do women overcome the limitation of their life cycle in Japan and Taiwan? Scholars have seen that the relationship between female employment rate and age is an M-shape in these two countries. More women enter the labor market after graduating from high schools or colleges, leave labor force due to marriages and/or childcare, return after their children are somewhat grown, and leave for retirement. Some scholars assert that this M-shape reflects the dilemma between families and jobs for women, while others believe that the curve is only due to cohort differences in women’s behavior.

      The OLS regression model cannot entangle the independent effects of age, period, and cohort because of statistical issues, and thus we need Age-Period-Cohort (APC) model to do so. Using this method, we attempt in this paper to clarify how age, period, and cohort each affect female employment and whether women’s participation in the labor force correlates with their family obligations or cohort transitions of women in Japan and Taiwan.

      This research indicates that the M-shape is more suitable to describe relationships between female employment and age in Japan. The female employment rate has a dip around the late twenties and early thirties. This indicates that Japanese women choose to leave the job market because of marriages or childbirth and they will later return to work when their children begin to attend schools. Nonetheless, the present research produces more like an inverse U shape in Taiwan. Compared to their Japanese counterparts, Taiwanese women nowadays rarely give up jobs once they enter the job market. Taiwanese women’s re-entry to the labor force around 35 to 44 years old was observed in 1980 through 1995 or so. Since 2000, however, this re-entry has not been readily observed.