IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/reveho/v11y2013i2p259-283.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Superstition effects versus cohort effects: is it bad luck to be born in the year of the fire horse in Japan?

Author

Listed:
  • Hiroyuki Yamada

Abstract

The year of the fire horse (called “Hinoeuma” in Japanese) is one of the sixty Chinese zodiac symbols used to count years. According to superstition, fire horse women are said to have troubled marriages, to mistreat men, and to cause early deaths for their husbands and fathers. No such stigma applies to men born in these years. This paper attempts to investigate the impact of women’s birth in the most recent fire horse year (1966) on the outcome of their lives by using individual-level microdata. We find that there is no evidence of disadvantages to fire horse women in human capital investment, performance in the marriage market, or intra-household allocation of resources after marriage. We provide two plausible explanations for this lack of impact from the stigma: a cohort size effect and a dynamic transition in the share of arranged and love marriages. The latter affected parents’ decisions in 1966 as well as the performance of fire horse women in the marriage market and in intra-household resource allocation after marriage. This finding suggests the importance of careful attention to the dynamic effects of society and the economy that may occur before the emergence of a cohort size effect. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013

Suggested Citation

  • Hiroyuki Yamada, 2013. "Superstition effects versus cohort effects: is it bad luck to be born in the year of the fire horse in Japan?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 259-283, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:reveho:v:11:y:2013:i:2:p:259-283
    DOI: 10.1007/s11150-012-9162-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11150-012-9162-9
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11150-012-9162-9?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. Rao, Vijayendra, 1993. "The Rising Price of Husbands: A Hedonic Analysis of Dowry Increases in Rural India," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(4), pages 666-677, August.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1981. "A Treatise on the Family," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number beck81-1.
    3. Masanori Hashimoto, 1974. "Economics of Postwar Fertility in Japan," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of the Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital, pages 225-254, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Kaku, K. & Matsumoto, Y.S., 1975. "Influence of a folk superstition on fertility of Japanese in California and Hawaii, 1966," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 65(2), pages 170-174.
    5. Jere R. Behrman & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2002. "Does Increasing Women's Schooling Raise the Schooling of the Next Generation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 323-334, March.
    6. Rohlfs, Chris & Reed, Alexander & Yamada, Hiroyuki, 2010. "Causal effects of sex preference on sex-blind and sex-selective child avoidance and substitution across birth years: Evidence from the Japanese year of the fire horse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 82-95, May.
    7. Andrew Francis, 2011. "Sex ratios and the red dragon: using the Chinese Communist Revolution to explore the effect of the sex ratio on women and children in Taiwan," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(3), pages 813-837, July.
    8. Grossbard-Shechtman, Shoshana Amyra, 1984. "A Theory of Allocation of Time in Markets for Labour and Marriage," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(376), pages 863-882, December.
    9. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    10. Eugene Choo & Aloysius Siow, 2006. "Who Marries Whom and Why," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(1), pages 175-201, February.
    11. Hashimoto, Masanori, 1974. "Economics of Postwar Fertility in Japan: Differentials and Trends," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 170-194, Part II, .
    12. Anderson, Siwan, 2007. "Why the marriage squeeze cannot cause dowry inflation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 140-152, November.
    13. Lee, Jungmin, 2005. "Marriage, female labor supply, and Asian zodiacs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 427-432, June.
    14. Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 2002. "Marriage Market, Divorce Legislation, and Household Labor Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 37-72, February.
    15. Ka-Fu Wong & Linda Yung, 2005. "Do Dragons Have Better Fate?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(3), pages 689-697, July.
    16. Masanori Hashimoto, 1974. "Economics of Postwar Fertility in Japan: Differentials and Trends," NBER Chapters, in: Marriage, Family, Human Capital, and Fertility, pages 170-199, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Jungmin Lee & Myungho Paik, 2006. "Sex preferences and fertility in South Korea during the year of the horse," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 43(2), pages 269-292, May.
    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. Siniver, Erez & Yaniv, Gideon, 2015. "Kissing the mezuzah and cognitive performance: Is there an observable benefit?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 40-46.
    2. Andy L. Chou, 2022. "Fortunes and misfortunes of the dragon sons: Direct and cohort effects of superstition on education attainment," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 75(4), pages 564-579, November.

    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. Simon Chang & Rachel Connelly & Ping Ma, 2016. "What Will You Do If I Say ‘I Do’?: The Effect of the Sex Ratio on Time Use within Taiwanese Married Couples," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 35(4), pages 471-500, August.
    2. Rohlfs, Chris & Reed, Alexander & Yamada, Hiroyuki, 2010. "Causal effects of sex preference on sex-blind and sex-selective child avoidance and substitution across birth years: Evidence from the Japanese year of the fire horse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 82-95, May.
    3. Shoshana Grossbard & Victoria Vernon, 2014. "Common law marriage and couple formation," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 3(1), pages 1-26, December.
    4. Josh Angrist, 2002. "How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 997-1038.
    5. Ran Abramitzky & Adeline Delavande & Luis Vasconcelos, 2011. "Marrying Up: The Role of Sex Ratio in Assortative Matching," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 124-157, July.
    6. J. Emery & Ana Ferrer, 2009. "Marriage market imbalances and labor force participation of Canadian women," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 43-57, March.
    7. Grossbard, Shoshana, 2016. "Marriage and Marriage Markets," IZA Discussion Papers 10312, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Bhaskar, Venkataraman, 2015. "The Demographic Transition and the Position of Women: A Marriage Market Perspective," CEPR Discussion Papers 10619, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. J. Gimenez-Nadal & Jose Molina, 2013. "Parents’ education as a determinant of educational childcare time," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(2), pages 719-749, April.
    10. Anyck Dauphin & Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 2018. "Is consumption efficiency within households falsifiable?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 737-766, September.
    11. V. Bhaskar, 2011. "Sex Selection and Gender Balance," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 214-244, February.
    12. Shoshana Grossbard & Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, 2008. "Cohort-level sex ratio effects on women’s labor force participation," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 6(3), pages 309-309, September.
    13. Anukriti, S & Dasgupta, Shatanjaya, 2017. "Marriage Markets in Developing Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 10556, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Maria Porter, 2016. "How do sex ratios in China influence marriage decisions and intra-household resource allocation?," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 337-371, June.
    15. Ekert-Jaffe, Olivia & Grossbard, Shoshana, 2008. "Does community property discourage unpartnered births?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 25-40, March.
    16. Eiji Yamamura & Antonio R. Andrés, 2015. "Influence of age of child on differences in life satisfaction of males and females," Journal of Economics and Econometrics, Economics and Econometrics Society, vol. 58(1), pages 1-25.
    17. Robert A. Pollak, 2019. "How Bargaining in Marriage Drives Marriage Market Equilibrium," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(1), pages 297-321.
    18. Goussé, Marion & Jacquemet, Nicolas & Robin, Jean-Marc, 2017. "Household labour supply and the marriage market in the UK, 1991-2008," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 131-149.
    19. Elizabeth Brainerd, 2017. "The Lasting Effect of Sex Ratio Imbalance on Marriage and Family: Evidence from World War II in Russia," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(2), pages 229-242, May.
    20. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/660vg58v5k8erajtn9uj2uue81 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Pauline Grosjean & Rose Khattar, 2014. "It's Raining Men! Hallelujah?," Discussion Papers 2014-29B, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Superstition; Cohort; Fire horse; Marriage; I31; J11; J12; J16; N35;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • N35 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Asia including Middle East

    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:kap:reveho:v:11:y:2013:i:2:p:259-283. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.