Japan: Economic System - World Health Systems Facts

Population (2021): 125,680,000
Gross National Income, Atlas method, Current USD (Billions), 2021: $5,461.34
GNI per capita, Atlas method, Current USD, 2021: $43,450
Gross Domestic Product, Current USD (Billions), 2021: $5,005.54

Source: World Bank. Country Profile: Japan. World Development Indicators. Last accessed November 23, 2023.

Gross Domestic Product Per Capita (Current USD), 2010-2019: $40,247
Share of Household Income, 2010-2019
– Bottom 40%: 21%
– Top 20%: 41%
– Bottom 20%: 8%
Gini Coefficient, 2010-2019: 34
Palma Index of Income Inequality, 2010-2019: 1.3

Note: Gini coefficient – Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.
Palma index of income inequality – Palma index is defined as the ratio of the richest 10% of the population’s share of gross national income divided by the poorest 40%’s share.

Source: United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of the World’s Children 2023: For every child, vaccination, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight, Florence, April 2023.

“Japan is the world’s third-largest economy by gross domestic product (GDP) and is a member of the Group of Seven (G7). Although Japan’s GDP increased rapidly in the immediate post-War period, the economic crisis of the 1990s caused several decades of stagnation and recession (Table 1.2). Industrial structure also changed significantly in the past decades. “Value added by services” was 70.0% of the GDP in 2015, representing a 4.2% rise from 2000 levels. However, the “value added by industry” fell by 3.8% of the GDP in the same period, as did agriculture, by 0.5% of GDP. This change in industrial structure is now affecting the sustainability of the Japanese universal insurance system (see more details in Chapter 3) (Ikegami N et al., 2011).”

Source: Sakamoto H, Rahman M, Nomura S, Okamoto E, Koike S, Yasunaga H et al. Japan Health System Review. Vol. 8 No. 1. New Delhi: World Health Organization, Regional Office for South-East Asia, 2018.

“Equity has been a central tenet in Japan, and the government has promoted equity both in depth and breadth of public services. Gini coefficients quantifying income inequality have declined consistently from 1962 to 1981 (indicating that income was distributed more equally over this period) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, 2017t). However, in the decades after the 1980s, Japan’s Gini coefficient increased (indicating higher levels of income disparity). In 2012, the Gini coefficient reached 0.33, which is higher than the OECD average (0.318) and is partially attributable to the increasing number of elderly persons (OECD, 2017b). Although Japan provides universal health insurance regardless of economic status with comparably lower premiums, an increasing number of children live below the poverty line, having reached 13.9% in 2015; these childerns’ parents may not be able to afford even the lowest premiums (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2015a). Concerns regarding the impact of increasing inequality among children in access to and quality of health care due to poverty are ever present. In 2011, Ikegami et al. estimated that there were about 1.6 million people who were not covered by national health insurance. This was largely due to an increase in the proportion of those with irregular employment at lower wages (from 18% in 1988 to 34% in 2010) and is now of great political concern (Ikegami N et al., 2011).”

Japan: Economic System - Healthcare - National Policies - World Health Systems Facts

World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated March 25, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.