Social Security Reforms and Inequality in Japan

We examined the heterogeneous impacts of social security reforms in Japan over the past 40 years. We utilize a nationwide large-scale micro-dataset to compute individual-level social security wealth (SSW) and mortality rates by lifetime earning groups. We found that SSW declined for all groups after the social security reforms, which aimed to reduce generosity; however, the size of the negative impact was larger for richer individuals. These results indicate that a series of recent social security reforms have reduced inequality in SSW.