The average income of a Japanese household dropped to 5.8 million yen in 2003, shrinking for the seventh consecutive year, according to a government survey released Wednesday.

The survey polled 277,000 households in June and July 2004 and asked about 36,000 of them what their income was in 2003. There are 46.32 million households in Japan.

Of those polled, 56 percent said they felt financially strapped. In particular, a record-high 63 percent of households with children, and half of all households of people aged 65 or older, said they found it difficult to make ends meet, the interim National Livelihood Survey by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry showed.

A record-high 17 percent of the households consisted of people aged 65 or older, or elderly people with children. Of them, more than 60 percent said they depended solely on the national pension system and government allowances to live.

With the introduction of elderly nursing-care insurance four years ago, a record-high 14 percent of those caring for elderly people were nursing-care professionals, topping 10 percent for the first time. A quarter of caregivers for the elderly were aged 65 or older themselves.

As the population continues to gray and the mass retirement of baby boomers looms, the government faces pressure to take measures in response, analysts said.

Household income has been on a downtrend since peaking in 1994 at 6.64 million yen, although the rate of decrease in 2003, 1.6 percent, improved slightly from 2.1 percent in 2002 and 2.4 percent in 2001.

Income for elderly households averaged 2.91 million yen, dipping below 3 million yen for the first time since 1993.

The survey also showed a growing trend toward nuclear families, with the number of three-generation households falling from 15 percent in 1986 to 9.7 percent, for its first dip below 10 percent.