Comprehensive Study on Structure and Change of Social Stratification System in Contemporary Japan

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The purpose of this research project is to develop new theories on social stratification and social mobility that explain two social phenomena that seem to be contradictory to each other : The fluidization and the immobilization of social stratification. For this purpose we conducted five social surveys for data collection as well as developing theories with which to analyze the data. Surveys in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were conducted in 2005 with similar questionnaires. A mail survey and a website survey targeting the youth, who have been strongly influenced by the fluidization in the labor market, were conducted in 2007. The results of the analyses of the data collected in these surveys are published in fifteen volumes of the report to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In addition to publication in the report, project members presented papers at academic conferences and published papers and books.We studied social stratification and social mobility from various perspectives because this project is an integrated project on this topic. Thus not all the results of the project can be presented in this abstract, but the following findings are representative of the results. 1) The increasing closure of intergenerational mobility of upper white-collar employees, which was argued by Toshiki Sato, is not the case in 2005. 2) Less-educated people and women are more likely to become non-regular workers than well-educated people and men. 3) Income disparity between regular and non-regular workers is large, but we need more detailed analysis to judge whether the disparity has become larger or not.It is particularly worth noting that this project is the first full-blown comparative study of social stratification and social mobility in East Asia. Some of the results of this comparative study are published in the thirteenth volume of the report titled Dynamics of Social Stratification in East Asia.