Effects of Regional Inequality on Political Attitudes: Regional Polarization Accelerated through Aging Population and Globalization in Japan

A rapidly aging population has been hugely influential on Japanese society, especially the social welfare system. Alongside this influence, under the neo-liberal regime of the Liberal Democratic Party, certain globalization trends have accelerated various social changes, especially in the Japanese economy. It is plausible to predict that these changes will have some effects on political opinions in Japanese society. Additionally, even though changes have been rapidly permeating throughout society, the speed at which change has had effects has not occurred evenly within the different regions of the country. This presentation aims to clarify how differences occurring in relation to different aging speeds of the population and differing effects of globalization among regions cause social inequality in Japanese society, through focusing on people’s political attitudes. To examine the differing effects of an aging population and globalization, the Social Stratification and Social Mobility survey (SSM 2015, N=7,817) and the 2015 national census have been used. For analysis, the rate of the over 65 years-old population in a municipality was taken as an index of the aging population, and the rate of foreign residents in a municipality as an index of globalization. Furthermore, SSM 2015 data were analyzed using a multilevel multi-nominal logit model. Analysis results showed that individual socio-economic status and demographic characteristics had mostly no effect on political attitudes. In contrast, the analysis demonstrated that differing regional rates of aging population and presence of foreign residents have statistically significant effects on political attitudes. In more globalized regions, people were more likely to support small government and minimal expenditure for social policies. In highly aging regions, people were more likely to support moderate levels of expenditure for social policies. These findings suggest that people in regions more exposed to rapid globalization changes tend to support neo-liberal policies.