Mikio Suga

Title: The Simulation Results of Expenditure Patterns of Virtual Marriage Households Consisting of Working Couples Synthesized by Statistical Matching Method

Abstract: Although benefits of marriage are generally recognized, the marriage rate has been declining in Japan (e.g., Nishioka et al., 2009). The reasons could attribute to unclear advantages of settling down (Yamato, 2017). However, there is little research which examines the benefits of married households by comparing with unmarried households with a relevant statistical method. We explored the impact of marriage on income and expenditure by using the micro-data of National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure for the year 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004. In this study, we randomly synthesized a single-person man and a single-person woman on the data by applying the statistical matching method and created virtual married conditions. The income and expenditure of these virtual couples were compared with those of actual married couples. By comparing the two groups, we can clarify how marriage affects consumption expenditures. In this method, it is possible to perform the analysis with detailed item classification more efficiently than conventional regression analysis. An overview of the results of the simulation was presented at the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) in 2017. In this paper, we discuss the findings more precisely with additional tables showing the details of the simulation results.

Presenter: Mikio Suga, Hosei University

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