In this study, we examine the effect of a remedial education program in language arts and mathematics for third and fourth-grade students with low previous academic performance. Utilizing a unique panel data set constructed from the administrative data of public elementary schools in Adachi ward in Japan, we estimate the impact of remedial program participation on the subsequent test scores in Japanese language arts and mathematics. This paper utilizes the variations in placement policies of schools as an instrument to identify the effect of the remedial education program, controlling for selection biases. Our estimation results indicate that the remedial education programs had positive effects on test scores of Japanese language arts by 0.13 of a standard deviation, while no statistically significant effect was found for mathematics test scores. The results suggest that the participants increased awareness of the importance of study practices and hours of study as well.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate how cardiovascular diseases harm labor force participation (LFP) among the Japanese population and verify the validity of plasma biomarkers as instrumental variables of cardiovascular diseases after adjusting for a broad set of confounders including dietary intake. DESIGN: Using nationally representative repeated cross-sectional surveys in Japan, the Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions and National Health and Nutrition Survey, with plasma biomarkers as instrumental variables for quasi-randomization. SETTING: Onset of cardiovascular diseases in those receiving regular treatment for hypertension, intracerebral hemorrhage, intracerebral infarction, angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, or other types of cardiovascular diseases. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 65,615 persons aged ≥ 20 years (35,037 women and 30,578 men) who completed a survey conducted every three years from 1995 through 2013. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Respondent employment and weekly working hours during each survey year. RESULTS: Cardiovascular diseases significantly and remarkably reduced the probability of working by 15.4% (95% CI: -30.6% to -0.2%). The reduction in working probability was detected for women only. Respondents aged ≥ 40 years were less likely to work once diagnosed and the reduction was enlarged for those aged ≥ 65 years, while those aged < 40 years appeared to be unaffected. Probability of engaging in manual labor significantly decreased once diagnosed; however, no impact was found for cognitive occupations. Among employed respondents, the adverse effects of cardiovascular diseases decreased working hours by five hours per week. Validity of the biomarker instrumental variables was generally verified. CONCLUSIONS: A vicious circle is suggested between LFP and unfavorable health. However, the effects vary across age, sex, and occupation type, even after adjusting for causal effects, which could cause a downward bias in LFP impact. ATTRIBUTES: cardiovascular disease, labor force participation, instrumental variable method as quasi-randomization, plasma biomarker, Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions, National Health and Nutrition Survey.

Aim: To determine the resident and facility characteristics associated with residents’ care-need level deterioration in long-term care welfare facilities in Japan. Methods: A nationally representative sample of 358 886 residents who lived in 3774 long-term care welfare facilities for at least 1 year from October 2012 was obtained from long-term care insurance claims data. Facility characteristics were linked with a survey of institutions and establishments for long-term care in 2012. We used a multilevel logistic regression according to the inclusion and exclusion of lost to follow-up to define the resident and facility characteristics associated with resident care-need level deteriorations (lost to follow-up: the majority were hospitalized residents or had died
were treated as deterioration in the including loss to follow-up model). Results: Adjusting for the covariates, at the resident level, older age and lower care-need level at baseline were more likely to show deterioration in the care-need level. At the facility level, metropolitan facilities, unit model (all private room settings) and mixed-model facilities (partly private room settings) were less likely to experience care-need level deterioration. A higher proportion of registered nurses among all nurses was negatively related to care-need level deterioration only in the model including lost to follow-up. A higher proportion of registered dietitians among all dietitians and the facilities in business for fewer years were negatively associated with care-need level deterioration only in the model excluding lost to follow-up. Conclusions: The present study could help identify residents who are at risk of care-need level deterioration, and could contribute to improvements in provider quality performance and enhance competence in the market. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2018
18: 758–766.

We evaluate a spillover effect of the Japanese public long-term care insurance (LTCI) as a policy to stimulate family caregivers’ labor force participation. Using nationally representative data from 1995 to 2013, we apply difference-in-difference propensity score matching to investigate the spillover effect in two periods: before and after the introduction of the LTCI in 2000 and before and after its major amendment in 2006. Our results show that the LTCI introduction has significant and positive spillover effects on family caregivers’ labor force participation and the effects vary by gender and age. In contrast, the LTCI amendment is found to have generally negative spillover effects on their labor force participation. We draw attention to these spillover effects, as expanding labor market supply to sustain the economy would be a priority for Japan and other rapidly aging countries in the coming decades.

It is widely documented that psychological distress is negatively associated with social networks involvement. However, despite the theoretical postulations that social networks are crucial for alleviating psychological distress, no study has yet empirically confirmed the causality of this relationship. Thus, we used the random-effects generalized least squares method to investigate the effect of one- and two-year lagged values for involvement in social networks on psychological distress. Nine years of longitudinal data were extracted from a nationally representative survey in Japan ("The Longitudinal Survey of Middle-aged and Older Persons"). We utilized the Kessler 6 (K6) score to measure psychological distress among 15,242 respondents aged 50-59 years in the baseline year (2005), and stratified participants into three layers of social networks: inner (well-established friendship ties and participating in hobby activates), intermediary (neighborly ties), and outer (involvement in community activities). We found highly significant and negative associations between all three layers and K6 scores, with the strongest association being for the inner layer. We further observed that one-year lagged involvement in the inner and intermediary layers led to significantly lower K6 scores. However, the protective influences of social networks generally diminished over time. In addition, the protective influences of social network involvement on psychological distress were stronger for women than for men. Furthermore, involvement in social networks was especially important for improving mental health among people with psychological distress. These findings would be important for policymaking to prevent mental health deterioration among middle-aged adults in Japan. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Objective Previous studies conducted in Japan targeted only mothers who cared for children with disabilities, and lacked reference subjects, such as mothers of children without disabilities. The aim of this study was to examine the association between raising one or two children with a disability and maternal psychological distress compared to mothers of children without a disability, and to assess differences among partnered mothers living with grandparent(s), partnered mothers without grandparent(s), and single mothers. Methods This study utilized data from the Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions (CSLC) in 2010. We merged the data of the children (aged six and over), mothers, and fathers. This study obtained 33,739 study subjects as a triad of a child (33,110 children without disabilities and 629 children with disabilities), mother, and father. The Japanese version of Kessler 6 (K6) was used to assess the psychological distress of mothers. Multivariate logistic regression was performed to assess the independent association of a child with a disability on maternal psychological distress after controlling for the basic characteristics of the children, mothers, and households. Results This study reported that raising one or two children with disabilities was significantly related to maternal psychological distress (odds ratio: 1.72 for one child, 2.85 for two children) compared to mothers of children without disability. After stratifying the analyses by family structure, significant associations remained among mothers in two-parent families but not for mothers in three-generation families and single mothers due to a small number of children with disabilities in these families. Conclusions This study reported the significant association between raising a child with a disability and maternal psychological distress in comparison to mothers of children without disabilities. Attention should be paid to not only single mothers, but also partnered mothers in two-parent families who have a child with a disability. It is important for health professionals to focus on the mental health of every mother of a child with a disability and to assess their needs for psychological support.

This paper examines the demand and supply of medical services for the elderly in the health services system characterized by per-month fixed copayment and selective capitation fee scheme for outpatients with chronic diseases. The results indicate that the beneficiary, in particular the household dependent, visits a physician more frequently because the actual copayment decreases for the household dependent, but is nearly the same for the head of the household. Physicians, however, provide more services to the beneficiary partly because of the lowered copayment and partly because of the capitation fee scheme, which they will select instead of the fee-for-service scheme only when capitation is more profitable than Fee-for-Service. As a result, physicians as well as the insured benefit from the health services system. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

I examined which workplaces, hospitals or clinics, female physicians are likely to select compared to male physicians. Employing panel data models with the age-stratified prefecture-based data of Survey of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists for 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004, I find first that female physicians under fifty years are more likely to move from hospitals to clinics than male and second that there are little cases of move from clinics to hospitals both for male and female physicians. It is alleged that managers of hospitals feel shortage of physicians and that the reason is well-experienced physicians tend to fly away to clinics because of hard work and insufficient reward to the job. The results of this paper suggest that increasing number of female physicians in recent years also contributes to the shortage.