IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v71y2019icp120-134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Student loans in Japan: Current problems and possible solutions

Author

Listed:
  • Armstrong, Shiro
  • Dearden, Lorraine
  • Kobayashi, Masayuki
  • Nagase, Nobuko

Abstract

The Japanese higher education sector has seen increases in tuition with stagnant household incomes in a society where family support for university students has been the norm. Student loans from the government have grown rapidly to sustain the gradual increase in university enrolments. These time-based repayment loans (TBRLs) have created financial hardship for increasing numbers of loan recipients and their families. There is some evidence that prospective students from low-income households are forgoing a university education to avoid student loan debt. The Japanese government has introduced some measures including grants and a partial income-contingent loan (ICL) scheme to help alleviate these problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Armstrong, Shiro & Dearden, Lorraine & Kobayashi, Masayuki & Nagase, Nobuko, 2019. "Student loans in Japan: Current problems and possible solutions," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 120-134.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:71:y:2019:i:c:p:120-134
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.10.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027277571730691X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.10.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Britton, Jack & van der Erve, Laura & Higgins, Tim, 2019. "Income contingent student loan design: Lessons from around the world," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 65-82.
    2. Higgins, Tim & Sinning, Mathias, 2013. "Modeling income dynamics for public policy design: An application to income contingent student loans," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 273-285.
    3. Barr, Nicholas & Chapman, Bruce & Dearden, Lorraine & Dynarski, Susan, 2019. "The US college loans system: Lessons from Australia and England," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 32-48.
    4. Masaaki KAWAGOE & Yukiko ITO & Masato TAKARA, 2018. "What Do Microsimulations Tell Us about Fiscal Costs of the Newly Launched Income Contingent Loans in Japan?," ESRI Discussion paper series 343, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    5. Nobuko Nagase, 2018. "Has Abe's Womanomics Worked?," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 13(1), pages 68-101, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dearden, Lorraine & Nascimento, Paulo Meyer, 2019. "Modelling alternative student loan schemes for Brazil," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 83-94.
    2. Dearden, Lorraine, 2019. "Evaluating and designing student loan systems: An overview of empirical approaches," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 49-64.
    3. Sano, Shinpei, 2019. "The effect of student loans on college enrollment: Evidence from municipality panel data in Japan," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dearden, Lorraine & Nascimento, Paulo Meyer, 2019. "Modelling alternative student loan schemes for Brazil," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 83-94.
    2. Dearden, Lorraine, 2019. "Evaluating and designing student loan systems: An overview of empirical approaches," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 49-64.
    3. Cai, Yu & Chapman, Bruce & Wang, Qing, 2019. "Repayment burdens of mortgage-style student loans in China and steps toward income-contingent loans," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 95-108.
    4. Lergetporer, P & Woessmann, L, 2022. "Income Contingency and the Electorates Support for Tuition," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 606, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    5. Hassani-Nezhad, Lena & Anderberg, Dan & Chevalier, Arnaud & Lührmann, Melanie & Pavan, Ronni, 2021. "Higher education financing and the educational aspirations of teenagers and their parents," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    6. Bolhaar, Jonneke & Kuijpers, Sonny & Webbink, Dinand & Zumbuehl, Maria, 2024. "Does replacing grants by income-contingent loans harm enrolment? New evidence from a reform in Dutch higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    7. Alessandra Casarico & Elena Del Rey & Jose I. Silva, 2023. "Child care costs, household liquidity constraints, and gender inequality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1461-1487, July.
    8. Don Tawanpitak, 2024. "Paying Tuition under Few Credit Constraints: Debt, Field of Study, and Drop Out," PIER Discussion Papers 226, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research, revised Jan 2025.
    9. Britton, Jack & van der Erve, Laura & Higgins, Tim, 2019. "Income contingent student loan design: Lessons from around the world," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 65-82.
    10. Britton, Jack & Gruber, Jonathan, 2020. "Do income contingent student loans reduce labor supply?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    11. Philip Oreopoulos, 2021. "What Limits College Success? A Review and Further Analysis of Holzer and Baum's Making College Work," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 546-573, June.
    12. Takatoshi Ito & Kazumasa Iwata & Colin McKenzie & Shujiro Urata, 2018. "Did Abenomics Succeed?: Editors' Overview," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 13(1), pages 1-22, January.
    13. Chu, Yu-Wei Luke & Cuffe, Harold E, 2020. "Do Struggling Students Benefit From Continued Student Loan Access? Evidence From University and Beyond," Working Paper Series 21067, Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance.
    14. Hügle, Dominik, 2020. "Higher education funding in Germany: A distributional lifetime perspective," Discussion Papers 2021/1, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    15. Camilo Andrés Garzón-Correa & Atilio Bustos-González & Melisa López-Hernández & Eduardo Calderón & Oscar Cespedes, 2022. "Challenges and Difficulties in Implementing an Income-Contingent-Financing Model in Higher Education in Colombia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-14, July.
    16. Lergetporer, Philipp & Woessmann, Ludger, 2019. "The Political Economy of Higher Education Finance: How Information and Design Affect Public Preferences for Tuition," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 145, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    17. Roger Wilkins, 2021. "Economic Wellbeing," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 54(4), pages 469-481, December.
    18. Cathal O'Donoghue & Gijs Dekkers, 2018. "Increasing the Impact of Dynamic Microsimulation Modelling," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 11(1), pages 61-96.
    19. Bruce Chapman & Lorraine Dearden, 2022. "Income-contingent loans in higher education financing," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 227-227, October.
    20. Cong Cao & Tianlan Wei & Shengyuan Xu & Fan Su & Haiquan Fang, 2023. "Comprehensive evaluation of higher education systems using indicators: PCA and EWM methods," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Student loans; Student loan design; Japan;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:71:y:2019:i:c:p:120-134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.