Economics
Dementia Sufferers Sit Atop a Mountain of Frozen Assets in Japan
- Sufferers’ holdings swell to a quarter of the economy’s size
- Families and financial firms fret over future of frozen funds
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Japan’s growing ranks of dementia sufferers are sitting on a mountain of frozen assets, creating personal dilemmas for loved ones fretting over how to handle that money and a drag on the nation’s economic prospects as the vast pool of wealth lays idle.
The pile of captive capital held by sufferers of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in Japan swelled to 143 trillion yen ($1.3 trillion) in the year ending March 2018, according to research by Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute Inc. That’s equivalent to more than a quarter of the size of the overall economy.