On Tuesday, April 7th, ISET hosted Professor Giorgio Brunello from the University of Padova. Prof. Brunello presented his recent paper titled "Pappa Ante Portas: The Retired Husband Syndrome in Japan”, which he collaborated with his colleague Professor Marco Bertoni.

Professor Brunello attempted to show the relationship between a husband’s retirement and the mental health (stress) of his wife by using econometric analysis. As explained, the paper was prepared based on Japanese microdata and the exogenous variation generated by the 2006 revision of the Japanese Elderly Employment Stabilization Law, which mandated employers to guarantee continuous employment between mandatory retirement age and full pension eligibility age.

After outlining the major paper topic, Prof. Brunello talked about the traditional behavior of Japanese employees, the role of gender, and the legislative situation in the entire country. Survey and findings collected for the paper revealed that adding one year to the time spent in retirement by Japanese husbands increases the probability that their wives develop the syndrome by 5.8 to 13.7 percentage points, depending on the empirical specification. Moreover, Prof. Brunello claimed that increasing female labor participation might further stimulate this problem.

The paper topic and the entire seminar attracted huge attention of the audience and was followed by an intensive discussion session afterward. ISET would like to express its gratitude to Prof. Brunello for his exceptionally remarkable paper and seminar to the ISET community.