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Economic Change, Value Shift and Marriage Behaviour

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Marriage and Fertility Behaviour in Japan

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Abstract

The primary purpose of this chapter is to examine whether Japanese marriage patterns are affected by economic and ideational factors. Its second aim is to explore the extent to which the transition from single status to married status has an impact on attitudes towards partnership and family. To achieve these goals, we will begin by considering salient features of Japanese marriage behaviour. Then, we will discuss the relation between Japanese marriage patterns and societal changes. Thereafter, the influence of economic and ideational factors on marriage behaviour will be examined, followed by an explanation of data and methods used in this analysis. Finally, we will examine the influence of marriage on attitudes towards partnership and family relations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For further details of the comparison of marriage and fertility patterns among industrialized countries, see van de Kaa (1987) and Coleman (1993).

  2. 2.

    For a discussion of the change of marriage patterns in the USA, see Cherline (1992).

  3. 3.

    The two-year junior college is a type of college offering less strenuous higher education which mainly offers elementary liberal arts and vocational training.

  4. 4.

    Caution is needed when we interpret the statistical result of this study, because it may suffer from the ecological fallacy (see Langbein and Lichtman 1978; Robinson 1950).

  5. 5.

    In a sense, filial obligation can be regarded as a kind of inter-generational wealth-flow mechanism (see Caldwell 1982).

  6. 6.

    The propensity scores were calculated by the following logistic regression.

    $$\begin{aligned} \log \left( {\frac{q}{1 - q}} \right) & = \alpha + \beta_{1} ({\text{sex}}) + \beta_{2} ({\text{age}}) + \beta_{3} ({\text{marital status}}) \\ & \quad + \beta_{4} ({\text{the years of living in your current house}}) \\ & \quad + \beta_{5} ({\text{educational attainment}}) + \beta_{6} ({\text{residential prefecture}}) \\ & \quad + \beta_{7} ({\text{the number of children ever}} {\text{-}} {\text{born}}) \\ \end{aligned}$$

    Here, q is the probability of respondents remaining in our sample.

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  1. Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

    Nobutaka Fukuda

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Fukuda, N. (2016). Economic Change, Value Shift and Marriage Behaviour. In: Marriage and Fertility Behaviour in Japan. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0294-6_3

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