The Research Centre for Information and Statistics of Social Science is creating the Databases of the MAF SFHE in prewar Japan from the original survey materials kept at the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University.
The MAF SFHE, had been conducted by the MAF of Japan and related agencies from 1913 to 1994, is a statistical survey to understand management/economic activities of agricultural households. Surveyed households were extracted from all prefectures in Japan with classification according to land-holding ratio standard. The Survey covered various items such as assets, production, labor, and consumption. The survey results had been published as the aggregated data of the each surveyed year, and it is possible to investigate the general economic conditions of agricultural households.
Construction of panel databases from the individual files surveyed was completed for the period from 1931 to 1941. In this period, the farm economy had recovered from the severe impact of the Showa Depression, and Japan rushed toward the Second World War. The Center is currently compiling a database from 1942 to 1948, namely, the period during and after the war.
Some experimental analyses have been conducted that utilise some part of the compiled database. The followings are the results obtained in these analyses.
● Analysis on labor force (Saito, 2009): The farm women readily increased their supply of working hours whenever their husbands had to work longer, thereby decreasing their hours spent for domestic tasks; the allocation of wives’ work time was significantly influenced by alternating stages of the family life cycle, shaped under household formation rules of Japan's stem family system.
● Analysis on self-provisioned consumption (Ozeki, 2009): At the period right after the Depression, when the decline of sericulture occurred, sericulturists increased the proportion of expenditure on self-provisioned food, indicating that they tried to maintain their livelihood during the changeover process from sericulture to other agricultural productions.
● Analysis on asset accumulation (Kusadokoro, Maru and Takashima, 2012, 2015): While the size of operational land tended to converge to around two hectare, the size was not affected by the land holding structure and was adjusted according to the family structure; farm households placed emphasis on the accumulation of liquid assets, such as cash and quasi-money, livestock, and stock-in-kind, indicating that households used these assets as buffer stocks.
● Analysis on production function (Maru, Kusadokoro and Takashima, 2015): Agricultural production in this period was decreasing returns to scale, and the efficient size of operational land was around two hector in terms of production technology; the change in total factor productivity tended to have larger increasing trend in the first half of the 1930s, right after the Depression, than that in the second half when Japan went on a war footing.
● An analysis of how assets affected farming households’ educational and medical expenses after the Showa Depression (Kusadokoro, Maru and Takashima, 2016): Although it has been confirmed that medical expenses had an asset effect in the short term, educational expenses had no asset effects in the short or the long term.
● An analysis of the consumption expenditure on alcohol and tobacco (Maru, Kusadokoro and Takashima, 2018): Alcohol had the strong nature of a tool for social intercourse in the rural area of the interwar period Japan, and therefore households’ degree of sociality might affect the expenditure pattern of alcohol.
The Research Centre for Information and Statistics of Social Science published results obtained from the series of construction activity of the Databases as "Noka Keizai Chosa Detabesu Hensei Hokokusho (in Japanese) [The Report of the Databases Construction of the MAF Survey of Farm Household Economy], vols. 1-8." For further information, please refer to the page "Publications." In case of necessity, please contact the Centre.
Also, there are some results of experimental analyses using the Databases.
● Ozeki, Manabu, and Masahiro Satow (2008) "From Agricultural Booking to Household Analysis: The Formation of the Household Analysis Method and a Role of the Kyoto School in that Process," The Economic Review, Vol. 59, No. 1, pp. 59--73.
● Ozeki, Manabu (2009) "Self-provisioned Consumption by Farm Families in Interwar Japan: A Preliminary Exploration," The Economic Review, Vol. 60, No. 2, pp. 112--125.
● Saito, Osamu (2009) "The Farm Household and Intra-family Work Patterns: An Analysis of Micro-data for 17 Farms in the Interwar Period," The Economic Review, Vol. 60, No. 2, pp. 126--139.
● Asami, Atsuyuki (2012) "Senzenki Noka Keizai Chosa no Boki Dezain no Hensen [The Transition of Accounting Designing in the Survey of Farm Household Economy in the Prewar Period]," in Inamoto, Shiro eds. Nogyo Keiei Hatten no Kaikei-Gaku: Gendai, Senzen, Kaigai no Keiei Hatten [Accounting of Farm Management Development: Farm Development in the Present and Prewar Periods in Japan and Overseas], Kyoto: Showa-Do.
● Kusadokoro, Motoi (2012) "Koshu Yosan Fukugo Keiei no Seisan Gijutu no Keisoku: Senzenki Noka Keizai Chosa no Hensen to Keiryo Bunseki [The Measurement of Production Technology in Crop-Sericulture Multiple Farming: Econometric Analysis and the Transition of the Survey of Farm Household Economy in the Prewar Period]," in Inamoto, Shiro eds. Nogyo Keiei Hatten no Kaikei-Gaku: Gendai, Senzen, Kaigai no Keiei Hatten [Accounting of Farm Management Development: Farm Development in the Present and Prewar Periods in Japan and Overseas], Kyoto: Showa-Do.
● Kusadokoro, Motoi, Takeshi Maru, and Masanori Takashima (2012) "Asset Accumulation Behavior of Rural Households in the Reconstruction Period following the Showa Depression: A Panel Data Analysis Using the Third Period MAF Survey of Farm Household Economy," Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series, No. 231.
● Maru, Takeshi, Motoi Kusadokoro, and Masanori Takashima (2015) "Productivity and the Growth of Japanese Agriculture in the 1930s: A Panel Data Analysis Using a Survey of Farm Household Economy," PRIMCED Discussion Paper Series, No. 71.
● Kusadokoro, Motoi, Takeshi Maru, and Masanori Takashima (2015) "Asset Accumulation in Rural Households during the Post-Showa Depression Reconstruction: A Panel Data Analysis," Asian Economic Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 221-246.
● Kusadokoro, Motoi, Takeshi Maru, and Masanori Takashima (2016) "Educational and Medical Expenditure of Agricultural Households under the Reconstruction Period from the Showa Depression," Journal of Rural Problems, Vol. 52, No. 3, pp. 97-104.
● Maru, Takeshi, Motoi Kusadokoro, and Masanori Takashima (2018) "Alcohol and Tobacco Expenditure of Agricultural Households in the Interwar Period Japan : A Panel Data Analysis Using the Third Period MAF Survey of Farm Household Economy (1931-41)," The Economic Review, Vol. 69, No. 2, pp.115-128.
● Kusadokoro, Motoi, Takeshi Maru, Masanori Takashima, and Osamu Saito (2020) "Changes in Household Size and Reallocation of Household Labor in Interwar Rural Japan," The Economic Review, Vol. 71, No. 1, pp.83-101.
The Third Period MAF data (1931-1941) will be released soon.
For more information about the Databases, please e-mail us at "noukei[at]ier.hit-u.ac.jp" (please change "[at]" to "@").
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