The economics of education in Japan: a survey of empirical research on education and its economic aspects(in Japanese)

This discussion paper surveys empirical analyses on education in Japan, focusing on educational attainment, school efficiency, demand for education, and relations between education and social stratification. It compares purposes, methodologies, results and policy implications of previous researches, and clarifies issues yet to be addressed. Several researchers estimate the "rate of return" of university education using the published data, based on the human capital theory. Many studies, however, find that demand for education depends more on family characteristics such as parents' income and educational background than on the rate of return of education. And labor economists provide mixed results about plausibility of the human capital theory in terms of wage profiles and promotion. In other topics, lack of data availability limits a scope of empirical research. Especially, in sharp contrast to the United States, there are few analyses that quantify how school quality such as class size and teacher quality can affect educational attainment. The government has to substantially improve availability of panel data as well as cross-sectional data in education. Microeconomic analysis on productivity and efficiency of higher education, which has started recently, should also be enriched by more disclosure of financial and other micro data. Finally, more interdisciplinary research will be needed.Many researches in educational sociology find signs of increasing "stratification" in demand for education and educational attainment. This aspect has important implications to educational economics, which is interested in income transfer between generations through education. Education seems to be one of the key factors to affect class stratification and income distribution, which should be jointly addressed by sociologists and economists.