42% of Japanese heads of household over 60 years of age

Prof. Marvin Zonis of the University of Chicago notes:

From my Annual Forecast, dated December 7, 2011:

“The population began to shrink in 2005 and the new data from the 2010 census will be released in February 2011. It will show an accelerating decline in the number of Japanese. What will increase is the number of households headed by people 60 years of age or older. In 1990, Japan claimed 10.2 million such households. In 2011, watch for the number to leap to 21.2 million households, likely comprising a full 42 percent of all households.

“Why does this matter? Because, while households headed by ‘oldsters’ own some 80 percent of all household assets, Japan’s low interest rates have devastated the income generated by those assets. (The interest rates are low, of course, because of the quantitative easing instituted by the central bank.) The result is that those households have largely stopped spending. But because
consumption is about 60 percent of the GDP, there has been little to drive the economy besides exports.