The role of home ownership in Japan’s aged society

Abstract

In postwar Japan, a housing system focused upon promoting residential-property ownership has been embedded in the wider context of providing welfare. However, Japan’s home-ownership-oriented society has been progressively challenged by growing inequalities both between and within generations, and aggravated by intensive societal aging. Since the 1990s, a more volatile and uncertain economy has made it more difficult for younger cohorts to access home ownership, which has undermined traditional mechanisms for maintaining the ‘home-owning society’. Within older cohorts, economic conditions relating to home ownership have become noticeably differentiated, leading to considerable stratification among elderly people. While residential-property ownership has been a cornerstone of Japan’s welfare system, it has also driven an aggravation of socioeconomic inequalities. The focus of this paper is the assessment of sustainability of the home-ownership-based welfare approach in Japan with particular reference to inter- and intra-generational inequalities. Empirical evidence was obtained by re-calculating the micro-data from the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure as well as other statistical sources.