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