See "Table 4: Births to Unmarried Women as Percent of All Live Births, 10 Countries, Selected Years, 1960-1986," <http://www.bls.gov/ opub/mlr/1990/03/art6full.pdf>. Unfortunately, the data is a couple of decades old, but I believe that the pattern has held up. The difference is huge. But that doesn't explain the difference in birth rate between Japan and France or the trend toward a lower birth rate in Japan, which is merely a variant of the same trend observable everywhere in the industrialized world and even in the developing world -- only more intense. Japanese women could have very well married and had children as they used to, and if they had done so, the birth rate wouldn't have gone down or more probably gone down more moderately.
Naoshiro Ogawa says that the Japanese have developed a unique lifestyle of being sexually active without marrying or cohabiting or having children:
<blockquote>[Ogawa]: Drop in fertility The definition of aging is fairly loose. An increase in the elderly population versus a decrease in the younger population. This means a longer life expectancy and reduced fertility.
So maybe we should look at the components of these demographic trends. The first one shows changes in fertility. Between 1947 and 1949 we had a baby boom. This is the most important message that I want to convey to you today. The Japanese baby boom was very short, between 1947 and 1949, three years. After that Japanese fertility went down. Between 1947 and 1949 we had a large number of births, something like 2.7 million a year. And after that it declined dramatically.
After 1949, Japanese fertility went down by 50% in ten years' time, which was the first such experience in the history of mankind. And so, obviously, something dramatic was going on. Up until 1950 the Japanese economy was in a shambles. I mean severely crippled. The famous demographer, Warren Thompson, went to Japan in 1947 and 1948 at the request of President Truman as an advisor for General MacArthur and looked around the country. In a report he submitted to the president, he said that Japan was hopeless. No way it could recover. But Japan might be able to export the following four items by 1970. Can you guess what they were?
Audience: Toys.
Ogawa: Toys, good guess, good guess.
Audience: Textiles.
Ogawa: Textiles, that is right. Three more to go. Okay, bicycles. And rubber shoes and truck lights. He couldn't predict automobiles. Why did he make a mistake? I mean he is a well-known demographer. Why did he make a mistake like that?
The fact is this: he couldn't predict a 50% reduction in fertility in ten years' time. He submitted the report in 1947. In 1950 Japanese per capita income was $153, which was even lower than that of the Philippines. The Philippines' per capita GNP was $172, Mexico's was $181. So Japan was behind Mexico and the Philippines. And U.S. per capita GNP was $1,883, so the U.S. per capita income was about twelve times as high as the Japanese per capita GNP.
So Japan was really in bad shape at the time, but things started getting better. In the beginning, fertility reduction was facilitated through abortion. Three-quarters of pregnancies in the first half of the 1950s ended in abortion. In the second half, 50% of pregnancies were aborted. And in the first half of the 1960s pregnancies were prevented with contraceptives.
So fertility declined, first through abortion and then through contraceptives. And as you know, the pill is still illegal in Japan. Japan is the only industrial nation which hasn't legalized the pill. But it looks like it is going to be legalized by the end of this year [Note: it was legalized in June 1999.].
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
There are two steps. Fertility dropped after 1950, held steady for a while, and it started going down again after the oil crisis in 1973.
Choosing to stay single
Let's now look at the changing methods of fertility reduction. Around 1970, a large number of births were averted with contraceptives and abortion. But in the recent past, the pattern is different. The proportion of singles has been rising dramatically in the last 15, 20 years. So the source of declining fertility is different.
Japan is quite unique in that sense. Marriage patterns have been changing. It is one of the silent revolutions underway in our country. And the question is, why?
According to the 1995 population census, 50% of women in their late 20s are single. The highest figure is Sweden's, but the U.S. is much lower than the Japanese level. And what is surprising to me is that back in 1985 the proportion of singles for this particular age group was only 30% in Japan. And in 1990, five years later it was 40%. Before 1995 I checked with all my demographer friends in the United States and England and asked them to guess the value for 1995. We had long, long discussions, and our guess was 42%. We never expected it would go as high as 50%.
Audience: Excuse me, but you are using unmarried and single synonymously.
Ogawa: Yes.
Audience: And that, I think, is where your Swedish data are misleading. Because we have many more cohabiting.
Ogawa: Yes, yes. I'll come to that later.
Yes, so in other words, over the last 15 years, every 5 years, the percentage of singles increased by 10 percentage points, which is quite shocking, even for Japanese people. So why is it that Japanese women don't want to get married? That is the question.
First of all, values are changing. According to a survey I was involved in, 75% of Japanese women in their twenties support a concept called "New Singles." This means that "I would like to enjoy the single life without worrying about marriage." And 75% of them support this idea, but in the case of men only 50%. So in other words, even when Japanese men want to get married, Japanese women may not.
This is obviously a big change in values, and the major factor behind this change has been that more women are receiving higher education, living in urban areas, and are in paid employment. As families modernize and grow more urbanized, Japanese women will be better educated and further entrenched in the labor market. And it looks like the proportion of young women supporting this idea will increase in the years to come.
Education is a big factor. Japanese women's educational levels are rising like crazy. In fact, if you combine four-year colleges and junior colleges, the proportion of Japanese women receiving higher education is 48% right now. And in the case of men it is lower, at 42%.
I did some econometric computations on this--computing the rate of return on education. In the case of women--suppose there are two girls. One girl stops with a high school education and starts working right away. The other girl proceeds to a four-year college. This girl will earn a 60% higher annual salary than her friend. So the rate of return is 60%, which is quite startling. But in the case of men it is only 20%, so I tell my male students that they don't have to come to university, I want to have girls because that is more sensible from the economic point of view. [Laughter] But anyway, apart from that, I asked the question, "Why?" A lot of Americans, a lot of foreigners tend to believe that the Japanese woman's status is very low. Which is true, depending on how you look at it. But differences in hourly wages for those below age 30 are shrinking dramatically. Back in 1950 the difference was 1 to 0.7. Now it is 1 to 0.86. It's been steadily narrowing between men and women. Why has this happened?
The reason is that more women are getting hired. The difference in starting pay between men and women is not so great. About the same. But those women who go on to get higher wages don't want to get married. Because they don't want to get married, they accumulate seniority and get even higher wages. Because they get more pay they still don't want to get married.
In other words, because they don't want to get married, they gain seniority, and because of this they get higher wages. This leads, in turn, to substantial economic autonomy, so they have even less compunction to get married.
Co-residence with parents
I did a survey last year on what are the important factors on the part of women in choosing their prospective mates. I did a similar survey back in 1988. In 1988 I didn't include this category, but personality is quite important. Almost 85% of the women surveyed thought that was quite important. The second most important was income. About 78% of the women said that was very important in choosing a marriage partner. And the third most important was occupation. About 75% of them said this was a factor. But what is most shocking was this. Between 1988 and 1996 the percentage of women who said potential co-residence with parents-in-law was a crucially important criteria for choosing their prospective mates rose dramatically. Well that is quite defensible. In Japan, about 75% of my students are either the eldest son or eldest daughter. And according to this analysis, the major determinant of co-residence is birth order. Because of Confucian teaching, if you are the oldest, you have to live with your parents. This has been changing, but it is still a basic, fundamental force that is in operation.
Previously there were lots of second and third sons, so women did not always confront the prospect of living with parents-in-law. But these days nearly all the boys are the oldest. I mean there are no other sons. So, if a woman is also the only daughter or the eldest daughter, they have to look after both sets of parents. So naturally co-residence has become a very important factor in choosing a prospective mate.
The probability of co-residing with parents at the time of marriage is settling. Back in 1965 about 62% of marriages led to co-residence with parents immediately after marriage. But the rate has been falling, falling, falling. Yet even now, more than 30% of newly married couples live with parents.
Another factor which is affecting the marriage market is the proportion of marriages which are arranged. Arranged marriages are falling. Back in 1955 there was a sort of social force that dictated that men and women of certain age had to get married, often through arranged marriages. But this phenomenon has been falling quite rapidly. It used to be that 63% of marriages were arranged, but now it is less than 10%.
So social binding is gone. It is more like a free market. People can choose their prospective mates in the "marriage market."
When to have children
Another major change over the past few decades is the interval between marriage and birth of the first child. According to a 1984 PDR article written by Morgan, Brinks, and Parnell, Japanese people have a very short first birth interval. I think in 1965 about 16 months was the average interval between marriage and first birth. But recently it has been changing. At that time, according to them, Japanese couples wanted to have a kid ri ht away because Japanese women found the source of happiness in children. In other words, a woman's primary source of happiness was the children, rather than the husband, so women wanted to have kids right away. But in America the conjugal relationship is more important. That is why the birth interval in the United States is much longer. On average the interval between marriage and first birth is 24 to 26 months.
But now, the Japanese first birth interval is almost like America's. It has been changing, but this figure is quite tricky. There are more couples who are having children before marriage. In Japan marriage meant procreation. But this doesn't really hold anymore.
The average age of first marriage for Japanese women is 27.7 and that for men is 30.7. They are very high. They are some of the highest in the entire world. But, according to my 1996 analysis, the average age of first sexual contact for girls has been falling dramatically, so the period in which they are sexually active has been getting longer.
Even though the period of sexual activity is longer, I mean without getting married, co-habitation is very low. Compared to Sweden, the co-habitation rate in Japan is one-fortieth of the Swedish case.
Nobody can really explain what is happening. I mean I am having a hard time. I am trying to write a paper on that. Japanese singles lead a unique l festyle. They are sexually active, but they are not cohabiting, and the age of marriage is very high.
("Demographic Trends and Their Implications for Japan's Future," 7 March 1997, <http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/japan/socsec/ogawa.html>)</ blockquote>
A very interesting story. I hope that Japanese women will continue to stick to the birth strike -- the ruling class will have to promote gender equality or import more immigrant workers or do both.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>