[The causes for the recent decline in Japanese fertility and future prospects].

Japanese fertility has declined dramatically since 1973: the crude birth rate (CBR) decreased from 19.4 in 1973 to 12.8/1000 population in 1983, and the total fertility rate (TFR) decreased from 2.14 to 1.74 between 1973-81. Decomposition analysis of such decline in the CBR showed that while it was partly due to the change in marital fertility it was due mainly to both the change in age structure and the change in marital pattern. The relative stability of marital fertility was also confirmed by the results from the 8th National Fertility Survey in 1982. The mean number of children ever born was 2.2 on the average for the most recently completed families, the same as in the previous 2 National Fertility Surveys (1972 and 1977). In addition, the total intended number of children for the young married couples who did not complete their fertility was 2.3 on the average. 2-3 children was the response of most of the single people, both male and female, if they married. Conversely, the proportion married decreased in this decade due to the rise in age at 1st marriage; this rise in age was due, partly to a marriage squeeze caused by an imbalanced sex ratio among some age cohorts and mainly by the rapid increase in college enrollment rates in the latter half of the 1960s and in the 1st half of the 1970s. The 8th National Fertility Survey also showed that almost all the unmarried young intended to eventually marry in the normative marriageable age. The female age cohort that suffered the marriage squeeze has already reached the mid-30s and the female cohort younger than this enjoys the relative advantage over the male counterpart in the marriage market. Also, college enrollment rates ceased to increase in the mid-1970s. Therefore, the rise in age at marriage is expected to end soon. Given the universality of marriage desire among the unmarried women in their late 20s, it can be expected that there will be a rise in the proportion of married women aged 25-34 above the previously prevalent level. Given the relative stability of fertility behavior among those married, such a proportion in the rise in the proportion married would bring about the rise in age specific birth rates at relatively higher ages and, as a result, the rise in the TFR. The adequacy of such prospects seems proven both by the steady rise in total 1st marriage rate since 1978 and by the upward turn of the TFR since 1982. (author's modified)