Cash Demand and Demographic Changes in Japan

Abstract:

This paper examines the future evolution of cash demand in Japan, amid rapid demographic aging and the increasing adoption of cashless payments. Despite a decline in cash use for daily transactions, aggregate cash demand has remained stable, likely due to cash hoarding by older generations. Using survey data from 2021 that separates cash held for daily use and hoarding purposes by age group, we project cash demand through 2070. Our baseline scenario assumes constant cash-holding behavior by cohort, while an alternative scenario incorporates reductions reflecting the spread of cashless payments. Adjustments for the underrepresentation of high-cash-holding households are made using methodologies from the distributional national wealth literature, which employs Pareto distributions to align microdata with aggregate statistics. Results suggest that cash on hand (COH) will decline by 1.5%–2.4% annually, and cash at home (CAH) by about 1% annually. The rate of decrease in cash demand is faster than the population decrease of 0.7%, as we assume that future older individuals will hoard less cash than current older individuals, and future younger individuals will use less cash for day-to-day payment due to the spread of cashless payments. We find that a 1% rise in deposit rates would cause a 20% decrease in CAH demand, a much stronger effect than demographic aging. Finally, we discuss the implications for the Bank of Japan’s balance sheet, as declining cash demand could increase the Bank’s cost burden during monetary tightening.