Determinants of private consumption growth
In the previous section, we found that there have been substantial and stable differences
among the G7 countries in private consumption growth rates. In this section, we attempt to
shed light on the reasons for these substantial differences. However, we confine our analysis
to the 2002–2007 period for two reasons—first, because sectoral data (in particular, data on
the household sector) are still not yet available for the most recent period, and second because
the 2002–2007 period was a relatively prosperous period between the Asian financial crisis
and the global financial crisis and it is important to understand why private consumption
growth was relatively stagnant in Japan even during this period of global prosperity