Discussion Papers 2018

CIRJE-F-1077	"Who Grew Rich? Anatomy and Intergenerational Dynamics of Economic Elites under Japan's Modernization"
Author Name	Matsumoto, Tomoko, and Tetsuji Okazaki
Date	March 2018
Full Paper	PDF file
Remarks	Revised in January 2020.

Abstract
The transition from a feudal to a modern society has a substantial impact on income distribution. We explore how transition to a modern society and its economic consequence, particularly industrialization, affected the composition and inter-generational mobility of top income people, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Japan. We analyze newly constructed individual-level data of economic elites on income, occupation, education, social stratum and family relationship, and find that the regime change and industrialization provided commonage people a new opportunity to grow rich and escape from the fetter of their social strata and fathers’ income, but that this process resulted in emergence of a new group of economic elites reproduced intergenerationally.

Abstract

The transition from a feudal to a modern society has a substantial impact on income distribution. We explore how transition to a modern society and its economic consequence, particularly industrialization, affected the composition and inter-generational mobility of top income people, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Japan. We analyze newly constructed individual-level data of economic elites on income, occupation, education, social stratum and family relationship, and find that the regime change and industrialization provided commonage people a new opportunity to grow rich and escape from the fetter of their social strata and fathers’ income, but that this process resulted in emergence of a new group of economic elites reproduced intergenerationally.