Are Married Women Really Wealthier than Unmarried Women? Evidence from Japan

Using microdata from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers, this paper examines the relationship between marriage and wealth with particular focus on women. By exploiting unique data on personal wealth, it also assesses whether the wealth effect of marriage differs depending on whether we measure wealth in terms of personal wealth or household wealth, an issue that very few studies have examined thus far. When wealth is measured in terms of equivalized household net worth on the assumption that household resources are shared equally within married couples, marriage is found to contribute to women’s wealth holdings but only to their nonfinancial net worth, although there are some signs that it also contributes to their total net worth as the duration of marriage becomes longer. By contrast, when wealth is measured in terms of personal net worth based on the actual ownership of assets, marriage is found to be negatively and significantly associated with women’s wealth holdings. These findings underscore the fact that women in Japan are potentially in a financially vulnerable position even after they marry, which is driven, at least partly, by the fact that married women’s careers tend to be disrupted by family responsibilities in Japan.