Dimensions of Inequality in Japan: Distributions of Earnings, Income and Wealth between 1984 and 2014

Inequality has become a central policy issue across the world. We study trends of
inequality in earnings, income and wealth across households in Japan, using the
National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure (NSFIE) from 1984 to 2014. We
focus on the transition of inequality unconditionally and conditionally across various
dimensions of household heterogeneity such as age, cohort, employment and marital
status of household heads, sources of income, family size, etc. Inequality in earnings,
income and wealth all increased during the last three decades. Changes in earnings and
income inequality were mostly driven by demographic shift in the population towards the
elderly, who tend to have higher inequality. Wealth inequality rose not only in the
aggregate but also among the young, and this is due to a major increase in the fraction
of households who own zero or very low wealth across all age groups. Critical factors in
understanding inequality trends in Japan that we identified are aging demographics,
changes in typical household structure, and macroeconomic trends of the past decades
including the financial bubble period and a decades-long slow-down thereafter.