Household Savings Rate in National Accounts and Household Surveys in Japan

We have constructed household savings rate data that are consistent with the macro data, or National Accounts, yet are based on the micro data of the National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure (NSFIE). Unlike the official NSFIE data, we calculate the savings rate for all households including the self-employed. In addition, on the consumption side, we address the underreporting problem in large expenditures such as durables as pointed out in previous studies by exploiting information from the Survey of Household Economy. According to the data constructed here, the decreasing trend in the savings rate can hardly be explained with the aging population, while the life-cycle hypothesis predicts that aging should be the main cause of the lower savings rate.