Personal Income. This study uses a respondent’s personal income as a measure of economic resources. Economic resource is an important factor for a marriage. The 0000 Xxxxx General Social Survey provides data for an individual’s personal income in 19 mutually exclusive ranges from “less than 700,000 yen” to “23 million yen or over”. Instead of creating a dummy variable for each income range, I incorporate personal income in its log form by conservatively taking the lower bound of each income range. For the group with earnings less than 700,000 yen, income is assumed to be the simple average of the lower bound and upper bound of the income range, which is 350,000 yen. The log treatment on the personal income data create two problems. The first problem is formation of missing value on respondents with no personal income. Out of 1,977 samples in the survey, 191 stated that they had no personal income. To avoid losing these observations when log income is used, I change the numerical income of people without any income into 0.1 yen. The second problem is the low response rate. 236 stated that they “don’t want to state the income”; 56 claimed that they “don’t know” about their personal income; 63 simply gave no answer to this question. To still keep these individuals in the sample, I assign a numerical income of 1 yen to these individuals. The disadvantage of doing this is that it can increase noise in the estimate of the impact of income on marriage status. However the benefit of including these individuals in the sample outweighs the cost because the individuals who choose not to answer a question on income are typically not random. Moreover, a robustness check done later in this study also indicates that the estimate of the impact of income on the probability of being unmarried does not change significantly with or without these individuals in the sample. Studies on marriages in Western societies provide evidence for a positive relationship between income and likelihood of marriage (Xxxxxxxxxxx, 1988; Cherlin, 2004; Xxxxxxx, 2002; Xxxxxxx, 2010). It is possible that personal income might create opposite influences on marriage of males and females in Japan. This difference can originate from differences in gender egalitarianism between Western and Eastern culture. In a traditional Japanese family, males are expected to work hard and produce economic resources for their family whereas females are expected to be housewives taking care of the family. Despite the increase in women...
Personal Income. Please note that any non-Company income including gains on sale of stock, sale of real estate or any other non-Company compensation (such as equity based compensation from other employers) will not be subject to the tax equalization policy. This means that you will bear the full worldwide tax burden for non-Company income. Similarly, the policy does not cover the tax implications and liabilities related to estate/inheritance tax nor wealth tax on either the home or host country.
