Consumption Smoothing in the Working-Class Households of Interwar Japan

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Institute of Science Tokyo; Tokyo Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050724000019
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 111-148
• 关键词: implicit contracts; full insurance; labor-market; child growth; RISK; income; networks; INEQUALITY; sickness; WEALTH

摘要

I analyze factory worker households in the early 1920s in Osaka to examine idiosyncratic income shocks and consumption. Using the household-level monthly panel dataset, I find that while households could not fully cope with idiosyncratic income shocks at that time, they mitigated fluctuations in indispensable consumption during economic hardship. In terms of risk-coping mechanisms, I find suggestive evidence that savings institutions helped mitigate vulnerabilities and that both using borrowing institutions and adjusting labor supply served as risk-coping strategies among households with less savings.