RIEB Seminar

5:40pm～7:10pm

Topic

Toward Better Informed Decision-Making: the Impacts of a Mass Media Campaign on Women's Outcomes in Occupied Japan

Speaker

Yoko OKUYAMA (Department of Economics, Uppsala University)

Abstract

Lack of access to information undermines our optimal decision-making. It is, however, an empirical question whether targeted information campaigns toward less-informed populations change their decision-making. This question is particularly salient to gender issues as past research shows that women are often disadvantaged in information acquisition. In this paper, I shed light on women's radio programs that were aired in Japan under the US-led occupation (1945-1952) and brought new information to Japanese women. Exploiting local variation in radio signal driven by soil conditions as an instrumental variable, I identify and estimate the causal impacts of exposure to women's radio programs on female political participation, labor market participation, marriage, and fertility decisions. I find that, in areas where women were more exposed to women's radio programs, women turn out more and female candidates gain more votes in the first election after World War II. Moreover, information provision through women's radio programs significantly contributes to the fertility decline and therefore has an important implication for the nation's demographic landscape. Female labor force participation and marriage remain the same, suggesting that the declining fertility is neither due to women's greater aspiration for their career nor to decline in marriage. My results are not driven by a pre-existing correlation between radio signal and women's behavior before the US occupation. My findings provide evidence that a targeted information campaign can affect recipients' behavior. They also lend support to the contemporary initiatives by the UN, NGOs and NPOs to use mass media to reach out to women who have limited access to information.