Income Inequality in Japan in Comparative and Historical Perspectives

Tuesday, April 14, 2015
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)

Philippines Conference Room
Encina Hall, 3rd Floor, Central

Publication of the Japanese translation of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century” last December and his visit to Tokyo in January has rekindled a national debate over a growing economic disparity in Japan. Is income inequality rising in Japan? Does it follow in the footsteps of the U.S. and other Anglo-Saxon countries, as Piketty predicts? Is the rich growing richer, or the poor getting poorer? In this talk, Professor Moriguchi reviews recent trends in income disparity in Japan, using top income shares and other measures, and evaluate their significance from both historical and international perspectives.
 
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Chiaki Moriguchi
is a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) during the 2014–15 academic year. She joins APARC from Hitotsubashi University’s Institute of Economic Research in Tokyo, where she serves as a professor. She was an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University prior to joining Hitotsubashi University.
 
Her main research fields are economic history and comparative institutional analysis. Her research interests include comparative analysis of child adoption in the U.S. Japan, and Korea; comparative analysis of state capacity in Qing China and Tokugawa Japan; the long-run evolution of income inequality in Japan; the economic impacts of the Great East Japan Earthquake; and the comparative historical analysis of employment systems in the U.S. and Japan. During her visit at APARC, she will conduct research on educational outcomes of adopted children in the U.S. and on income and wealth inequality in Japan.
 
Chiaki received a PhD in economics from Stanford University and an MA in economics from Osaka University, Japan.