| Masa Higo | Last modified date：2023.11.22 |
Professor /
The International Student Center
Books
| 1. | Thomas R. Klassen Masa Higo Nopraenue S. Dhirathiti Theresa W. Devasahayam, Ageing in Asia-Pacific: Interdisciplinary and Comparative Perspectives, Routledge, 2018.12, In the coming decades, challenges and risks associated with rapid population ageing will be paramount in Asia-Pacific. Examining key trends, dilemmas and developments with reference to specific nations, the book draws conclusions and policy recommendations that apply to Asia-Pacific as a whole. Individual chapters focus on the impact of population ageing, along with urbanization and industrialization, on the lives of people in the region. The book shows how leaders in Asia-Pacific – political, community and others – need to respond to changes in family and social structures, disease pathology, gender roles, income security, the care of older citizens and the provision of social and health welfare.. |
| 2. | Masa Higo, Thomas R. Klassen, Retirement in Japan and South Korea: The Past, the Present and the Future of Mandatory Retirement, Routledge (New York), 2015.05, [URL], This book analyses reforms to retirement policies and practices in Japan and South Korea, especially in the context of rapid population ageing. A defining feature of the labour markets and workplaces in these two nations, and the lives of workers and families, is involuntary retirement at relatively young ages. The book explains past developments and recent reforms of retirement policies both in the two countries, as well as in a cross-national comparative manner. At the core of the book is an examination of the social, economic, and political conflicts around retirement, such as between young and old workers, and between employers and workers. The policy recommendations offered apply not only to Japan and South Korea, but also to other nations with rapidly ageing populations, such as China. The volume mainly targets those interested in labor markets and workplaces, population ageing and contemporary East Asian, in addition to those studying retirement and pensions. Policymakers, business leaders, worker organizations, researchers and students will benefit from the insights about the past, present and future of retirement.. |
| 3. | Masa Higo, Constructing Older Workers and Retirement: The Experiences of Aging under the Lifetime Employment Institution in Japan, Lambert Academic Publisher, 2012.05, Today, against the backdrop of the demographic pressures to delay the retirement of older workers, sociologists of aging and gerontologists have begun exploring the impact of national labor market institutions on individual workers' experiences of aging and growing older at the workplace and in the labor market at large. This book has contributed to the literature by demonstrating that, with its persistent mandatory retirement policies, the lifetime employment institution in Japan serves as an intensive age-based social control mechanism that has constructed and reproduced 'older workers' in the country's labor force. Based on empirical research findings, this book argues that the Japanese government should find ways to mitigate the social exclusion, marginalization, and stigmatization that workers experience in their post-mandatory retirement working lives.. |
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