"A fallacy of a decreasing rate of parents-children coresidence: Increase of childless elders and their long-term care in Japan " (in Japanese)

This paper analyzes household structure of elders in Japan. Traditionally, this topic has been discussed from a perspective of coresidence of parents and children. However, we show that the number of childless elders, who do not have an option to coreside with their children, has rapid been increasing. We also show that the increase of childless elders may provide a problem in sustainability of the Japanese Long-term Care Insurance program. Our empirical analysis is based on microdata of the Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions an d finds the following re sults: The ratio of childless elder households over all elder households increased from 7.9% in 2001 to 15.7% in 2010. The number of childless elde r households are estimated as 3 million in 2010, among which the number of single elder households is estimated as 1.45 million. Besides, the rate of parents-children coresi dence for elders who have own children was not much changed. Furthermore, it is also shown that childless elder are more likely to enter long-term care institutions even with low requirement for care. Also, demographic statistics suggest that the number of childless elders will increase for the time being. Thus, it is required to reconsider a balance between home-based and institutional care services and improve efficiency of the institutional care sector.