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Japanese Men's Pocket Money Shrinks as Mothers Win More Respect
Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg
June 29th, 2017 | 09:31 AM | 1134 views
JAPAN
Wages and spending money have stagnated for working men
Japan’s once mighty salary men have taken a pummeling in recent years - with pay stagnating and rising numbers of working women and mothers eroding their once-dominant position as the family’s breadwinner.
Those changes have affected how they are seen at home, with Japanese children respecting their mothers more than fathers for the first time, according to recent research. And wives -- who typically control the purse strings in Japanese households -- have continued cutting their husbands’ "pocket money," a survey by Shinsei Bank showed this week.
Over the past two decades, average male base wages have shrunk 0.5 percent. And even though flat or falling prices mean there may have been little damage to purchasing power, that stagnation meant that there has been little impetus for pocket money to rise.
Conversely, the increasing entry of women into the workforce has meant that their pay rose - up 15 percent over the same period, according to a labor ministry report. That increase might partly be to add to family incomes and subsidize the flat salaries of husbands, but it’s causing a change in how women are perceived in the home, according to the research from Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living, which is connected to one of Japan’s largest ad agency .
The number of children who said they respect mothers surged to a record high of 68.1 percent, surpassing that of fathers for the first time, according to the Hakuhodo survey, which was conducted once a decade since 1997. About 62 percent of kids said they respected their fathers, down from the previous survey.
“We suspect the relationship between mothers and fathers is changing because of the increasing number of double-income households,” Hakuhodo said. “More mothers are working. They’re working and flourishing outside the home, and they also take care of chores at home,” the Hakuhodo Institute said in an emailed statement.
“We think the extent of respect from children went up from seeing that up close.”
And while more fathers are helping out at home, there is still a long way to go. Even though working men have the same entitlement as women for parental leave after childbirth, only 3 percent of men used this in fiscal 2016, with 57 percent taking less than 5 days in 2015. That compares with 82 percent of women using this subsidized leave, according to a labor ministry report.
“Japanese men continue to face a tough environment,” said Koya Miyamae, an economist at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. whose pocket money hasn’t risen in recent years. This stagnation of allowances is coming from concerns about wage growth, higher taxes and an aging population, problems that are bigger than any one man, he said.
Source:
courtesy of BLOOMBERG
by Toru Fujioka
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