Gender Differences of Stress Experience across the Lifespan: Using Japanese National Sample Data

There is large gender difference on stress experience across the lifespan. Using Japanese national sample data (Comprehensive survey of living conditions of the people on health and welfare, 1995), this paper denotes that women experience stress consistently higher than men throughout the lifespan, and examines some hypotheses that explain this pattern. Finally, it assumes that not only women's higher vulnerability to event on network member, but also higher vulnerability to event on self and family member can explain this pattern. This generalizes care cost hypothesis with the point that women provide care both to family members and to self. This means men provide care neither to others nor to self. Discussion is made about the possibility to reconstruct the sexual division of labor from the perspective of women's provision of care.