Why Is There Discrimination Against the Elderly? Experimental and Empirical Analyses for the Rental Housing Market in Japan

Nakagawa(2001) and Nakagawa(2002) applies a fair housing audit technique to age discrimination in Japanese rental housing market, using data from the 2001 Osaka Audits. However, the experimental design of the study had some problems to be improved, e.g. lacked generality. This paper reports the outcome of a new fair housing audit (the 2002 Osaka Audits), in which improvements were added for these problems, and analyzes the existence of discrimination against the elderly as a whole and a variety of causes of age discrimination, using a broader range of tests of hypotheses. The results obtained can be summarized as follows: housing discrimination against elderly home-seekers was observed on a statistically significant level. It was also suggested that the risk of the elderly's future income changing, the risk of fire caused by their negligence, the risk of their tenancy period becoming too long, and their preference for location of housing, as well as young people's preference for neighborhoods of young inhabitants, affected housing discrimination against elderly home-seekers. Finally, it was found that the patterns of restrictions on renting houses to the elderly differed according to their family structure and age.