Macro-Structural Bases of Consumption in an Aging Low Birth-Rate Society

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the driving factors in the changing structure of consumption at the macro-level caused by an aging society in Japan. To describe the macroscopic, dynamic, and structural bases of consumption, the authors used cohort analysis, which is a method of separating age, period, and cohort effects from time-series household accounts data, classified by age and period. Many items of expenditure are susceptible to the age factor. The effect of changes in the number of household members due to changing life stages and the effect of changing expenses due to aging of consumers can also be seen. Other expenditure items are susceptible to plural factors. For example, fish & shellfish, vegetables & seaweed, and fruit are all susceptible to both age and cohort factors. Eating out, private transportation, communication, and books & other reading material are susceptible to all three factors at different levels of effectiveness. Observing the profile pattern on the cohort analysis result graph, we can consider how market aging and the alternation of generations, which are viewed from a population theory perspective, affect the consumption structure.