Japan is experiencing unprecedented population aging. Therefore, as the younger age population declines, there will be increased importance placed on the development of youth in Japanese society. Youth protection education ordinance aims to promote the healthy development of people by restricting their access to inappropriate published material or harmful environments. While each prefecture manages prefectural ordinances of juvenile protection, it is not enough to evaluate the effectiveness of these ordinances from an economics aspect.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of prefectural ordinances on juvenile delinquency. The research uses the fixed-effect model with a Japanese aggregated panel data from e-Stat, a portal site for Japanese Government Statistics.

The main findings are:

(1) The coefficients for the ratio of job offers to applicants are negatively significant. The results suggest that job opportunity and regional economic condition can deter juvenile delinquency.

(2) The coefficients for student figure per one teacher at junior high school are positively significant. These indicate that regional education policy prevents delinquency.

(3)The research cannot observe the preventive effect of prefectural ordinances on juvenile crime.

Keiko Yoshida is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Momoyama Gakuin University. She received her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Economics, Osaka University. Her research interest focuses on labour economics, the economics of education, and public policy.

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