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Abstract

Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 117-131 (2001)

“Japan's Inequality in Income Distribution”
Fumio Funaoka (Faculty of Economics, Shinshu University)

Tachibanakis (1998) discussed Japan's inequality in income distribution, but several scholars pointed out that his handling of statistics was questionable and rather inadequate. Nevertheless, from my point of view, the question of why measured outcomes estrange from each statistical data, which was the focal point in comparing the degree of inequality, has not yet been sufficiently investigated.
Further, no conclusive or satisfactory basis for the recent increase in income inequality has been presented. This paper uses results from income distribution research based on survey micro-data to analyze whether the discrepancies in measurement outcomes are caused by inaccuracy of the statistical surveys or by differing survey methodologies. As a result, the discrepancy seems to be mainly caused by households surveyed, definitions, the sample rate and inference methods. It is clarified that if these are rectified, measurements are more accurately approximated. Furthermore, this paper also emphasizes that the increasing inequality of household income is influenced by the decreasing rate of the less shared living, and examines how we should understand the inequality and the interaction between changing composition of households and inequality in income distribution.