Kyodo via Yahoo: Older Japanese women to be powerful market force
Older Japanese women will become powerful consumers in wealthy but rapidly aging Japan, commanding some $313 billion in spending power by 2013, international credit card company MasterCard said Tuesday. Japanese women consumers 70 and older have been dubbed the "silver aristocrats" because contrary to stereotypes of the elderly being poor and frail, they are healthy, active, financially well-off and poised to become "a powerful and important segment" in the Japanese consumer market, the firm said. The most powerful consumers among Japanese women are in fact elderly Japanese who outlive their husbands, it said in its latest report entitled "Women consumer market in Japan -- the super-aging society."
