Abstract
After World War II, the fertility rate in Japan declined in two phases. The first phase was the decline in the 1950s after the baby boom in the late 1940s, resulting in replacement level fertility in the 1960s. The second phase was the decline from the 1970s, which lead to below replacement level fertility in the society. The main cause of the fertility decline in Japan since the 1970s was the decreasing marriage rate. In this chapter, factors influencing the decreasing marriage rate are explored through an empirical data analysis. The main cause of the decreased marriage rate was the marriage market mismatch. An increasing number of women were obtaining high educational qualifications and were more likely to not marry men with a lower social status. On the other hand, for men, the labor market became increasingly severe. A solution to this continued mismatch problem is to increase the number of dual-earner households. However, a dual-earner lifestyle is still difficult to achieve for most people in Japan.
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Notes
- 1.
The sudden, exceptional drop in the birthrate in 1966 was caused by “Hinoe-uma.” Many people in Japan at that time believed that women born in a Hinoe-uma year would have a rough-natured personality. Even those who did not give credit to this superstition thought that the shared belief would be a serious disadvantage to the future lives of their expected children. Eventually, this deterred many pregnancies, and the total fertility rate dropped from 2.14 the previous year to 1.58. For a detailed explanation of Hinoe-uma and abortion in Japan, see Kaku (1975).
- 2.
For more on the fertility trend and related demographic figures in Japan, see Hara (2015).
- 3.
Recent developments in historical demography reveal exceptional cases. In some premodern European areas, customs to control fertility, such as delaying (or canceling) marriages, were found (Hajnal 1965).
- 4.
See the report “Summary of the statistics on marriage (2006)” by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (https://www.mhlw.go.jp/toukei/saikin/hw/jinkou/tokusyu/konin06/index.html).
- 5.
A detailed discussion of these arguments is provided by Tsutsui (2015, pp. 36–38).
- 6.
For a detailed discussion, see Tsutsui (2015, pp. 48–49).
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Tsutsui, J. (2020). Factors Influencing the Fertility Decline in Japan. In: Work and Family in Japanese Society. SpringerBriefs in Population Studies(). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2496-3_2
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