Declining Marriage Rates in Japan: The Role of Marriage Market Composition and Spouse Pairing Preferences

Jim Raymo, University of Wisconsin at Madison
Miho Iwasawa, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan

Following Qian and Preston's (1993) study of changing marriage behavior in the U.S., we examine the role of changes in marriage propensities and marriage market composition in declining marriage rates in Japan. Using data from the past four Japanese National Fertility Surveys, we first describe changes in both the force of attraction for age-education-specific pairings and in the availability of suitable mates. We then extend Qian and Preston's study by adapting their harmonic mean function to generate age-education-specific pairing probabilities from which we construct multiple-decrement marital status tables. Using these life tables, we decompose observe change in synthetic cohort marriage curves into the contributions made by changes in marriage propensities and changes in marriage market composition. Preliminary results suggest the importance of both changes in market composition and changes in pairing propensities and that the relative importance of these two components of changes differs by educational attainment.