Abstract
Divorce is an important life event that affects family lives and social inequalities. In Japan, divorce has been a neglected area of family research due to the low divorce rate. Yet, the collection of longitudinal data for life-course analysis in Japan since the 1990s enables us to examine how divorce influences the lives of women, particularly of single-mother families. Many studies in Europe and the United States have already revealed that divorce causes severe economic and social deprivations for women and men. Parental divorce is a major cause of child impoverishment, which affects child development and eventually shapes educational and occupational attainments. Analyses of the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC) , a nationally representative longitudinal survey of 1,500 young women in Japan, estimated the impact of divorce on equivalized household income utilizing a fixed-effects model and a random-effects model. Women in Japan experience a significant household income decline after divorce, although most divorced women were employed prior to divorce. Their inadequate level of household income is due not only to Japan's gendered employment system but also to family policy that does not require compulsory child support payment from the divorced father. The government's child support for low-income families is inadequate. Consequently, women face great difficulties in maintaining their standard of living. The national policy leads to such families becoming impoverished, even though single mothers in Japan have the highest rate of employment among countries with similar economic standing in the world. Divorce has become more common in the past few decades in Japan; yet, policies lag behind social reality. Therefore, it is important to reconsider Japan's gendered employment and family policies.
