January 20, 2025
Keio University
Professor Isao Yamamoto of the Faculty of Business and Commerce and Project Associate Professor Kayoko Ishii of the Faculty of Economics at Keio University have analyzed panel data tracking households nationwide. They revealed that while Japan's income inequality did not widen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the well-being gap, measured by factors such as life satisfaction and mental and physical health, had actually widened in conjunction with income inequality. Although financial disparities were curbed by measures such as cash benefits, the spread of remote work among high-income earners and the benefits they enjoyed resulted in the widening and establishment of a gap in non-monetary aspects of well-being throughout society. Based on these findings, this study proposes the need to address the issue of inequality by considering not only income but also non-monetary aspects such as well-being, and to examine policy responses.
This research was conducted as part of the Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research project "The Structure and Transformation of Various Disparities Since the COVID-19 Crisis: An Economic Study Using Household Panel Data" (FY2022–2026), led by a research group including Professor Isao Yamamoto. In this research project, studies are underway to clarify from a broad range of economic fields how disparities in a wide range of aspects have manifested due to the COVID-19 crisis and how they may transform over the medium to long term. This is being done by constructing internationally comparable household panel data as a common infrastructure from the Japan Household Panel Survey (JHPS), which is managed by the Panel Data Research Center at the Institute for Economic Studies, Faculty of Economics, Keio University.
The results of this study were published online in Social Indicators Research , the official journal of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, on December 21, 2024.
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