The Declining Fertility Rate at the Below-Replacement Level: Determining Factors and Countermeasures - The Roles of Husbands, Workplaces, the Government and Society (Japanese)

Demographers have concluded that Japan's declining fertility rate at the below-replacement level is mainly propelled by delayed marriage or non-marriage. These factors also apply to other countries that have experienced sharply declining fertility rates, such as Korea and southern European nations. Compared to households in the U.S. or western Europe, however, in Japan and these other countries which experienced a rapid decline in fertility rate, wives have a major share of household work and child-rearing, "family-friendly" work environments are underdeveloped, and women face high barriers to reentry into labor force after leaving their jobs for child care. The decline in fertility rate is also affected by such social environments that surround married women in these countries. This paper analyzes data from the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers' Lives conducted by the Institute for Research on Household Economics to clarify what impacts social environments - such as the household and the workplace - has on birth desire and birth behavior among married women. Based on the results of this analysis, the paper discusses what roles that husbands, workplaces, the government, and local communities should play in order to mitigate the current rapid decline in the fertility rate.