Mary C. Brinton

Jul 7, 2024 | eastasiaforum.org | Mary C. Brinton |Yuri Okina |Hiroshi Ono |Sourabh Gupta

It seems that Japan’s economy — and with it, its workers — are on the move. People are changing jobs and that’s at last produced a boost to productivity. After a quarter of a century of stagnant prices, GDP and wage growth, pay packets are slowly rising, as are nominal GDP, tax revenues and productivity. What’s driving the change is that Japan is running out of its biggest asset — its people and talent. Japan’s population peaked in 2010 at 128.1 million and is now an estimated 121.2 million.

Jul 7, 2024 | eastasiaforum.org | Mary C. Brinton |Yuri Okina |Hiroshi Ono |Yuhan Zhang

For many years, women’s labour force participation patterns in Japan and South Korea were distinct from those in other post-industrial economies. Both countries had a so-called M-shaped age curve for female labour force participation, with large numbers of women exiting the labour force upon marriage or childbearing and then returning to paid work once their children entered school. While this pattern has persisted in South Korea, it has undergone considerable change in Japan in the past 15 years.

Dec 15, 2023 | ucpress.edu | Mary C. Brinton

This lucid, hard-hitting book explores a central paradox of the Japanese economy: the relegation of women to low-paying, dead-end jobs in a workforce that depends on their labor to maintain its status as a world economic leader. Drawing upon historical materials, survey and statistical data, and extensive interviews in Japan, Mary Brinton provides an in-depth and original examination of the role of gender in Japan's phenomenal postwar economic growth.