Even though there have been numerous studies which indicate that health disparity among children exists in developed countries, there has been notably few studies which investigated if the same is true in Japan. This study is one of the first attempts to look at the health disparity among Japanese children according to SES of household.
The analysis uses the 20st Century Baby Panel Survey by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare which is a large scale government panel dataset on children born in 2000 and covers up to age 7.
The paper reveals two main findings. Firstly, the results show that there are evidences of health disparity according to the SES of children in Japan. This is confirmed in some health indicators such as hospitalization and asthma. However, it is not clear if this disparity is present in all income strata or only between the poor and non-poor.
There are some evidences to support the latter. Secondly, the analysis showed an evidence indicating that the effect of a past health shock, depicted as past hospitalization, differs across SES, a finding similar to that of the analysis of US children.

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