TOKYO, (PNA/Kyodo) — The income gap among Japan’s households reached its widest disparity ever in 2011, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said Friday.
The key parameter for measuring income inequalities, known as the Gini coefficient, came to 0.5536 in the reporting year, up 0.0218 point from the previous 2008 study, which was conducted before the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. hit the global economy.
Under the Gini system, a Gini coefficient of 1 expresses maximal inequality, where only one person has all the income in the society.