ABSTRACT
Within the discourse on social inequality in Japan, socio-economic inequalities have been one of the major social issues that have received much attention since the late 1990s. An important point to bear in mind in this regard is that the degree of income inequality did not increase uniformly across all age groups. The gravity in income inequality in certain segments of society can be overlooked, as their contribution to the overall degree of income inequality varies depending on the size of the corresponding segments. In fact, much of the rise in income inequality since the mid-1980s is due to an increase in the percentage of households with elderly members, who exhibit a relatively large degree of income inequality (Ōtake 2005; Shirahase and Takeuchi 2009). This means that a large portion of the overall increase in income inequality can be explained by the fast demographic ageing of Japanese from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s. At the same time, an increase in income inequality has also been reported among younger age groups in their twenties and thirties (Ōta 2004; Shirahase 2006). Recently, we witness an increase in income inequality among young households, and especially among households with children. Abe (2008) points out how severe the situation is, with high rates of child poverty in international comparison (OECD 2014). In fact, when we look at the trend in the extent of income inequality by age of household heads, its degree among young households has increased significantly since the mid-1980s. Income inequality has become severe among particular type of households who are relatively small in number. As a result, this phenomenon tends to be underestimated when simply looking at Japanese society from a macro perspective.
