Estimation of Annual Consumption Expenditures by Japanese Households Based on the Microdata from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey:Estimation Methods and Illustrative Tables and Figures (in Japanese)

An issue that has attracted growing attention in Japan is the increasing economic inequality among households against the background of dramatic economic and social changes as a result of liberalization and globalization. This paper presents details on a dataset of Japanese households annual consumption expenditure that we constructed based on the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) and to provide an overview of our estimation methods. More specifically, we constructed a micro dataset of households’ consumption covering all years from 1983 to 2012 making adjustments for imputed rent, consumption seasonality, survey fatigue, and sampling ratio. Our findings based on the dataset can be summarized as follows: (1) The mean annual consumption expenditure of individual households in Japan has been gradually declining since the early 1990s. A possible explanation is the shrinking of household sizes, since the mean of equivalent consumption appears to have been broadly stable. (2) While the variance and Gini coefficient of total household consumption look stable throughout our observation period, those for equivalent consumption of non-durable goods increased until the early 2000s. (3) The shape of the consumption path over households’ life-cycle is hump-shaped (with a peak at around age fifty) and stable regardless of the household head cohort. (4) Consumption inequality among households appears to be greater among households with older heads. (5) The age-saving rate profiles differ considerably across different cohorts. JEL Classification Number: D12, D30, E21 Key Words: Family Income and Expenditure Survey, Microdata, Household Consumption, Income/Expenditure Distribution, Japan