Review of Population and Social Policy, No. 9, 2000, 47–63

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the
Declining Fertility Rate in Japan
Sawako SHIRAHASE*

Abstract
It is often asserted that the declining fertility rate in Japan is closely
associated with the increasing number of women who receive a higher education.
This study investigates that relationship from the theoretical perspective of social
stratification. Specifically, I incorporate the outlook of social stratification withdemographic approaches by analyzing the decline in fertility in relation toincreasing levels of educational attainment. The discussion is divided into two
major parts. The first part considers the marital and reproductive behavior
associated with family background, educational credentials, and first job as social
stratification variables. The second part takes up changes in values as aconsequence of increased education and examines the relationship between viewson the sexual division of labor and men’s participation in housework. One of themost important findings of this study is the effect of age on fertility. Whereas wehave confirmed that educational background is of great importance in reaching
the life stage of marriage, the decision of whether to give birth or not, which is
directly reflected in the declining birthrate, is strongly influenced by age atmarriage. Moreover, although it has been proposed that men’s participation inhousework be promoted to confront the declining birthrate, it appears that the
crucial issue of involvement in child rearing is more strongly associated with age
than with either values or education. It can be argued that the presence of atightly and hierarchically ordered timetable based on age is weakening theinfluence of socioeconomic factors such as education and work in Japan.

1. Introduction
In recent years a feeling of crisis has been produced by the continuous decline inJapan’s fertility rate. One of the main reasons offered for this decline has been
the postponement of marriage among young people. Specifically, it has beensuggested that obtaining a higher education has led young women to remain
unmarried in their twenties (NIPSSR 1998a). Moreover, it has often been argued
that the declining fertility rate is closely associated with the increase in womenwith a higher education (Osawa 1998). M. Atoh (1997), for example, explains
This is the English version of an article published in Kikan Shakai Hosho Kenkyu (Quarterly of
Social Security Research) 34 (4), Spring 1999. In writing this paper, I benefited from the helpfulcomments of Hiroshi Ishida. I am also grateful to Aya Ezawa, who helped me translate this paper
from Japanese into English, and to Seiko Yamada, who created the graphs and tables.
* National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

[ 47 ]

48

Sawako SHIRAHASE

that the growth of higher education after the 1970s resulted in increased
opportunities for women to work outside of the home, especially in professionaljobs, along with a change in social values and contributed to the increase inunmarried singles in their twenties. C. Ueno (1998), however, denies the direct
relationship between increased higher education and the postponement of marriage,
suggesting that female graduates of junior colleges or universities do not necessarily
pursue a career (p. 48). Nevertheless, the higher educational attainment among
women is frequently believed to be a key factor in Japan’s declining fertility. What is
the relationship between women’s increased education and fertility?
My main concern in this study has been to investigate the relationship between
the growth of women with a higher education and the decline in the fertility ratefrom the theoretical perspective of social stratification. Specifically, I haveincorporated the outlook of social stratification with demographic approaches by
examining the decline in fertility in relation to increasing levels of educational
attainment. Instead of treating this decline as an issue affecting women in general,
I will analyze it as it relates to the increasing number of women who have ahigher education, i.e., the problem of change in the distribution of social
attributes. In considering the influence of higher education on reproductive
behavior, it is necessary to closely investigate the question of whether higher
education has a direct effect on fertility or whether it is an indirect effect of othersocioeconomic parameters, such as social class or work status. One can further
ask whether, rather than educational background itself, the influence of one’s
family background is a key factor, since people with a higher socioeconomic
standing will more easily attain higher levels of education than those who do not
enjoy this advantage. Finally, there is the question of whether differences in
occupational status achieved through higher education (e.g., professional work
versus unskilled manual labor) influence reproductive behavior and whether
educational attainment has, via work, an indirect effect on reproductive behavior.
In addressing these questions, I examined in detail the influence of women’s
educational attainment on their reproductive behavior after completing theireducation. This study is divided into two major parts. The first part discusses
marital and reproductive behavior associated with family background,
educational credentials, and first occupation as social stratification variables. The
second part takes up changes in values as one of the consequences of increasing
educational attainment and considers the relationship between views on thesexual division of labor and men’s participation in housework.
Before beginning the main analysis, let us take a look at the time-serieschanges of women’s rate of advancement to senior high school, junior college,
and university, and the total rate of fertility with a macro perspective (Figure 1).
Enrollment of women in senior high school increased dramatically in the 1960s,

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan49

and by the end of that decade it even exceeded the rate for men by one point;
from 1975, the advancement rate surpassed 90 percent and gradually rose to 97
percent by 1997. By the late 1990s, then, almost all young women entered seniorhigh school after completing their compulsory education (junior high school). At
the university level, the rate of women’s enrollment almost doubled between
1970 and 1975 (from 6.5 % to 12.5 %) and continued to increase slowly; between
1993 and 1997 the rate increased by 7 points. Between 1965 and 1975 the rate ofenrollment in junior colleges, which constituted an important part of women’shigher education in Japan, tripled (from 6.7 % to 19.9 %), widening the difference
between the rates of advancement to junior colleges and universities—in 1975,
19.9 percent versus 12.5 percent. Later, enrollment increased in the form of agentle curve. By 1996, however, the rate of advancement to universities
surpassed that to junior colleges; in 1997, enrollment in universities reached 26.0
percent, as opposed to 22.9 percent in junior colleges. In this way, women’s
attainment of a higher education increased rapidly between the late 1960s andearly 1970s, and since the 1990s there has been a remarkable increase inadvancement to a university.
Throughout this period Japan experienced a sharp decline in the total rate offertility. After a sudden downswing in the early 1950s, the birthrate continuously
declined until the mid-1980s, when it began to drop rapidly, and by 1997 it fell
to 1.39 (NIPSSR 1998a). Since the latter part of the 1980s, the birthrate has been
declining specifically in inverse proportion to the increase of women’s

4

100
90

3.5
High school
Junior college
University
Total rate of fertility

70
60
50

3
2.5

40
2

30
20

1.5

10
0

1
1950 1960 1970

1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996
Year

Figure 1 Trends in women’s school enrollment and the total rate of fertility,
1950–1996

TRF

Enrollment rate (%)

80

50

Sawako SHIRAHASE

advancement to a university. In light of these findings, it is plausible to suggestthat there is a relationship between the increase in women’s access to a higher
education and the decrease in the fertility rate.

2. Data and Variables
This analysis is based on data from the 1995 Social Stratification and Mobility (SSM)
survey.1 Although the survey was not designed primarily to constructed to make ademographic analysis, it has the advantage of including high-quality variables onsocial stratification. For this reason, the survey data enable us to consider the
decline in the fertility rate within the framework of social stratification.2 The SSM
survey consists of a three-part questionnaire. The first half of this discussion
analyzes mainly part A, which provides the variables on work history; the second
half examines the sexual division of labor based on information supplied in part B.
In this study, family background which is derived from the father’s primary work,
the respondent’s first job, and the spouse’s job at the time of marriage are included
as stratification variables and are operationalized according to the EGP category(Erikson, Goldthorpe, and Portocarrero 1979). The EGP category is acomprehensive indicator of social status, as it takes into account not only the typeof occupation but also employment status, firm size, and managerial status. It
consists of six categories of work: (1) professional and managerial, (2) nonmanual,(3) self-employed, (4) agriculture (including self-employed and family workers), (5)skilled manual, and (6) semi-skilled and non-skilled manual.
Educational qualifications are classified into three categories: university andjunior college graduates, senior high school graduates, and junior high school
graduates. In the 1995 SSM data, the proportion of female university graduates was
no more than a solid third, while graduates of junior colleges constituted 61
percent of women with a higher education. Therefore, of the women considered inthis study, a majority of those in the first category were junior college graduates.
To examine the time-series change in the number of women with a higher
education and the declining birthrate, I have created four categories of age
cohorts and two categories of marital cohorts. The four age cohorts consist of
women born between (1) 1925 and 1935, (2) 1936 and 1945, (3) 1946 and 1959,
and (4) 1960 and 1975; the two marital cohorts comprise women who married
before 1970 and women who married after 1971.
1

2

I received permission from the SSM Survey Committee to use the 1995 SSM data. On thisoccasion, I would like to express my gratitude to the committee.
The data on marriage reflect marital status at the time of the SSM survey—i.e., present marriage,
which does not necessarily mean first marriage.

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan

51

Finally, to account for the time when educational credentials were obtained, I
have created three cohorts including women who graduated between (1) 1940
and 1960, (2) 1961 and 1975, and (3) 1976 and 1995.

3. Analysis
3.1. Marriage and Education

In Japan, it is rare for teenagers to give birth, and births outside of marriage
constitute less than 10 percent of all births. The increase in births outside ofmarriage among younger women can be related to a rise in cohabitation, whichis still relatively uncommon in Japan. In fact, the findings of the 11th Japanese
National Fertility Survey in 1997 indicate that among singles, only 4.6 percent of
women indicated that they had cohabited before; although this constitutes a
rapid increase from a decade earlier, cohabitation clearly remains unusual in
Japan (NIPSSR 1998b). In addition, when viewed in terms of attitudes, marriage
and children are considered as closely connected, as 78 percent of men and 72
percent of women agreed that “one should have children once married” (NIPSSR
1998b, fig. IV). Therefore, since the rate of cohabitation and the proportion ofchildren born outside of marriage have been extremely low (Iwasawa 1998), it ispossible to suggest that trends in birthrates and marriage are closely related inJapan. In exploring this relationship, I will first examine the timing of marriage,
then the period between obtaining educational credentials and marriage.
Table 1 shows the timing of marriage by educational credentials for thedifferent age cohorts. When viewed by education, the average marriage age
increases with higher educational attainment, and this difference is statisticallysignificant. Although not shown in the table, the average marriage age by
educational background was 25.4 for university graduates, 24.2 for senior highschool graduates, and 23.7 for junior high school graduates, indicating a 1.2-point
difference in marriage age between university and senior high school graduates.
The difference in the average marriage age of the age cohorts by educational levelis statistically significant at the .05 level; nevertheless, the data show no clear trend
toward an increase in the marriage age. The main reason for this is that thisanalysis captures only women who were married at the time of the survey; thecases of those who had not yet been married (but might marry at some point) are
not included. This factor must be considered in interpreting the results of a survey
made at a given point in time. The lower half of the table, which gives the resultsof the multivariate analysis of variance, indicates that there are differences
between educational levels and cohorts, yet significant interaction between the

52

Sawako SHIRAHASE

Table 1 Average age at marriage, by education and age cohort, 1925–1975
Age Cohort

Mean

S.D.

CRV

N

University graduates

1925–35
1936–45
1946–59
1960–75

25.63
25.36
24.96
26.29

2.22
2.78
2.75
5.25

0.09
0.11
0.11
0.20

70
107
22
7

High school graduates

1925–35
1936–45
1946–59
1960–75

23.52
24.26
24.24
24.62

2.60
3.71
3.75
4.28

0.11
0.15
0.15
0.17

140
302
151
106

Junior high school
graduates

1925–35
1936–45
1946–59
1960–75

19.57
23.39
23.99
23.71

3.16
4.61
3.67
3.22

0.16
0.20
0.15
0.14

7
61
121
139

MANOVA
Education
CohortEducation × cohort

F

d.f.

sig.

14.26
3.42
1.99

2
3
6

0.000
0.017
0.064

Key: S.D. = Standard deviation
CRV = Coefficient of relative variation
MANOVA = Multivariate analysis of variance

two cannot be identified, and a trend toward a higher marriage age only among
women with a particular educational background cannot be found.
Now, let us look at the period between obtaining the educational credentials
and getting married. It is important to note that a trend toward later marriage
means not only that women marry at an older age, but also that the interval
between the time they complete their education and marry is longer. Table 2
shows the average time between education and marriage for the different age
cohorts. Here we see that the time until marriage becomes shorter the higher theeducational level and that this difference is significant. The changes for thedifferent marital cohorts indicate a lengthening of the time until marriage at all
educational levels; this difference is also significant (see the results of themultivariate analysis of variance in the lower half of Table 2). However, there
was no significant effect of interaction between education and marital cohorts,
which means that regardless of educational level, there was a uniform trend
toward the lengthening of the time until marriage. Although the time until
marriage generally became longer, in the case of women with higher educational
credentials, the period of school attendance was longer, yet the period between
graduation and marriage was actually shorter than in the case of those with lesseducation. That is, the time until marriage for women with a higher educationconsidered in proportion to their period of school attendance was not longer

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan

53

Table 2 Length of period between completion of education and marriage,by marital cohort
Marital Cohort

Mean

S.D.

CRV

N

University graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

2.52
3.81

2.35
2.56

0.93
0.67

25
172

High school graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

5.53
6.62

2.91
3.97

0.53
0.60

282
415

Junior high school
graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

8.36
10.05

2.89
6.06

0.35
0.60

269
59

MANOVA
Education
Marital cohort
Education × marital cohort

F

d.f.

sig.

104.90
19.17
0.56

2
1
2

0.000
0.000
0.570

Key: S.D. = Standard deviation
CRV = Coefficient of relative variation
MANOVA = Multivariate analysis of variancethan in the case of those with lower educational levels.
Let us now turn to the rate of transition to marriage, taking into consideration
the (censored) cases of women who have not yet been married, as raised earlier
in connection with the interpretation of the results of a survey conducted at agiven point in time (Table 3). The analytic method used here is the so-called
proportional hazard rate or Cox regression analysis. Starting from the time thewomen completed their education, the probability of their moving to the stage ofmarriage (transition rate) is calculated for each point in time by counting thecases of nonoccurrence of this event, which is a useful statistical method toanalyze time-dependent variables such as marriage and childbirth. Table 3 shows
the coefficients of the variables under given hypotheses in the form of
logarithms. In taking the exponents of the coefficients and proportion of theirdifferences, we can assess the influence of each explanatory variable.
Four hypotheses are established in this analysis. First, the family backgroundhypothesis (Equation 1) states that women born into a prosperous family will
marry if they believe that such a union will enable them to maintain the same
standard of living enjoyed by their own family. Because of this tendency, thoseborn into a family with professional or managerial status have a lower marriage
rate than those born into a family of unskilled manual laborers (Yamada 1996).
Second, the hypothesis on educational background (Equation 2) maintains thatwomen with a higher education tend to aim for self-realization and that thisbehavior is inclined to lower the marriage rate. Third, the labor market
hypothesis focuses on the type of first employment, suggesting that women

54

Sawako SHIRAHASE

engaged in a professional job are more likely to receive opportunities forpromotion, and, because they tend to choose a career over marriage, theirprobability of marrying is low. The fourth hypothesis, which uses graduation-age
cohorts to represent time-series trends in assessing the increase in women with ahigher education, is that women who have completed their education in recent
years find it more and more difficult to marry; this corresponds with the current
trend toward postponement of marriage.
In Equation 1, none of the categories of family background (i.e., using womenborn into families of unskilled manual laborers as the reference category) shows
significant effects. In other words, whether a woman marries or not is not
influenced by her family background. Equation 2 on the effects of educational
background shows that university graduates and senior high school graduates
when compared with junior high school graduates (as the reference category)
have a significantly higher marriage rate. Specifically, the probability for university
graduates to marry is even twice as high as that for junior high school graduates.
Table 3 Cox regression analysis of the rate of transition to marriage(log. coefficients)
Equation 1
Family background
P-M
N-M
S-E
FARM
S-M

Equation 2

Equation 3

Equation 5

0.09350.0940–0.0068–0.1016–0.0834

Education
University
High school

0.7157*0.4328*First job
P-M
N-M
S-E
FARM
S-M

0.5481*0.3238*0.16400.2310*–0.46420.1086–0.1290

Graduation-age cohort
1976–1995
1961–1975N% censored–2LL

Equation 4

1,217
18.1
12785.730

1,373
18.9
14485.162

Key: P-M = Professional and managerial work
N-M = Nonmanual work
S-E = Self-employed
FARM = Farm work
S-M = Skilled manual work

1,297
18.9
13621.280–0.08390.0299–0.4575
0.4039*–0.06480.4537*0.4089*0.2493*0.3115*1,373
18.9
14501.436

1,297
18.9
13564.415* Significant at the 0.01 level.

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan

55

These results thus contradict the hypothesis on educational background, whichsuggests that women with a higher education tend to face difficulties in marrying
because they strive for self-realization; instead, our findings indicate the opposite
trend. Third, the influence of the first job after their education was completed was
only significant for women in nonmanual positions. That is, those whose first job
was nonmanual had a higher rate of marriage than those starting with unskilled
manual work. Here, we can cite office work as representative of employment foryoung women in postwar Japan; according to the study results, to get an officejob means to increase the probability of marrying. However, although the working
hypothesis pays particular attention to professional work, these show no
significant effect. Fourth, with regard to the graduation-age cohorts, women who
graduated between 1976 and 1995 and between 1961 and 1975 show asignificantly higher marriage rate than the 1940–60 cohort; i.e., those who recently
completed their education are more likely to have married. For example, those
who graduated after 1976 had a 50 percent higher marriage rate than those who
did so before 1960. Based on our examination of the overall effects of eachvariable, none of the above hypotheses are supported.
Equation 5 includes all those variables that have shown significant effects except
family background. The variables with significant influence were education,
agricultural work as a first job, and completion of education between 1976 and 1995
and between 1961 and 1975. With regard to the probability of marriage, a significant
discovery was the strong influence of education and year of graduation and thelimited influence of social stratification variables such as family background and firstjob after graduation. The decision whether or not to take the big step towardmarriage was strongly related to education, i.e., whether a woman had graduatedfrom a university (junior college) was an important factor. However, in the Cox
regression analysis, in addition to the likelihood of marriage, we have also
considered the length of time between graduation and marriage. The hypothesisthat women who have obtained a higher education are older when they marry andtend to postpone marriage has been supported, yet, from the perspective of the rateof transition to marriage, this does not always mean that those with a higher
education are less likely to marry. The reason for this is that although the period ofschooling is longer, the period until marriage is shorter among young women.
O. N. Tsuya and K. O. Mason (1995) claimed that as a result of conducting a
proportional hazard analysis of marriage age as a dependent variable, rather thanwiping out the probability of marriage, higher educational attainment would leadto the postponement of marriage. My analysis is generally consistent with theirfindings, confirming that women with a higher education marry when they areolder, but the rate of transition to marriage as such is not low. Therefore, to marry
involves two axes—the time of marriage (age) and the timing until marriage

56

Sawako SHIRAHASE(period)—and these two axes do not necessarily work in the same direction.
Consequently, whether a woman enters the new life stage of marriage isstrongly influenced by whether she has attained a higher educational level andthe age at which she has completed her schooling. However, there is little
indication that whether she has engaged in paid work prior to marriage—i.e.,socioeconomic status—is significant. When looking at the distribution ofoccupations by education, we see that the higher the education, the higher theconcentration in a limited number of occupations, a tendency that is stronger for
women than for men. According to the 1990 census of Japan, 53 percent offemale university graduates worked in professional occupations, among which thejob of schoolteacher was representative. But overall, the limited occupations thathave been associated with the increase in women with a higher education does
not seem to have produced a significant influence on their likelihood to marry.3
3.2. Birth of the First Child and Education

We now turn to the timing of the first childbirth after marriage.4 Table 4 shows
the results of multivariate analysis of variance of age at the birth of the first childby education and marital cohort. The more advanced her education, the older
the woman at the birth of her first child; the differences by level of education are
statistically significant. Also between marriage cohorts we can identify a shift inage at childbirth; the younger the cohort, the older the woman at childbirth.
However, this change was not significantly different between educational levels(there was no interaction between both variables). That is, age at the birth of thefirst child was more advanced for women with higher educational degrees, yet
an increase in the age at childbirth could be found at all educational levels.
Table 5 looks at the length of the period between marriage and giving birth tothe first child by education and marital cohort. There are no significant
differences between educational levels and cohorts with regard to the period
until childbirth. That is, although the age at birth of the first child differs byeducational background, this is related to the fact that women with a higher
education marry at an older age, whereas the period between marriage andchildbirth does not differ, regardless of educational background.
At this point let us consider women’s rate of transition to childbirth, including the3

4Note the fact that, in my analysis, the share of junior college graduates among those with ahigher education is high, and that therefore the results do not necessarily apply to women who
graduated from a four-year university per se.
In the 1995 SSM data, the question of the presence or absence of children is limited to those
who have been married; it therefore does not provide any information on children born outsideof marriage.

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan

57

Table 4 Age at birth of first child, by education and marital cohort
Marital Cohort

Mean

S.D.

CRV

N

University graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

25.64
27.62

3.02
3.00

0.12
0.11

28
148

High school graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

25.33
26.03

3.42
3.66

0.14
0.14

265
381

Junior high school
graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

24.90
24.89

3.36
4.49

0.13
0.18

251
54

MANOVA
Education
Marital cohort
Education × marital cohort

F

d.f.

sig.

7.87
8.14
2.51

2
1
2

0.000
0.004
0.082

Key: S.D. = Standard deviation
CRV = Coefficient of relative variation
MANOVA = Multivariate analysis of variance

Table 5 Length of period between marriage and birth of first child,by education and marital cohort
Marital Cohort

Mean

S.D.

CRV

N

University graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

2.90
3.11

3.28
6.10

1.13
1.96

176
27

High school graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

2.43
3.93

3.37
7.78

1.39
1.98

406
267

Junior high school
graduates

Before 1970
After 1971

3.07
2.99

4.99
5.88

1.63
1.97

54
237

MANOVA
Education
Marital cohort
Education × marital cohort

F

d.f.

sig.

0.10
1.24
1.95

2
1
2

0.906
0.265
0.142

Key: S.D. = Standard deviation
CRV = Coefficient of relative variation
MANOVA = Multivariate analysis of variance

rate of those who had not yet had a child at the time of the survey (censored cases)(Table 6). Our working hypothesis is the same as that used in the analysis of therate of transition to marriage and includes the occupation of the husband at the timeof marriage (Equation 4). Here it is suggested that the birthrate would be low for
women who married men in a professional or managerial position. That is, since
the educational attainment of the husband in a professional or managerial position

58

Sawako SHIRAHASE

tends to be high, it is likely that he will marry a woman with a higher education.
Further, since the hypothesis on educational background suggests that the birthrate
is low among highly educated women, we hypothesize that those who marry to
men in a professional or managerial position will have a low birthrate. Table 6
shows the results of the Cox regression analysis (Equations 1 through 6); significant
effects were found among university graduates, husbands in professional ormanagerial positions, and the age at marriage. All of these variables depressed thebirthrate. For example, as suggested in the hypothesis on educational background,the birthrate was 19 percent lower for women with a higher education than those
Table 6 Cox regression analysis of rate of transition to birth of first child
Equation 1 Equation 2 Equation 3 Equation 4 Equation 5 Equation 6 Equation 7
Familybackground
P-M
N-M
S-E
FARM
S-M
Education
University
High schoolFirst job
P-M
N-M
S-E
FARM
S-M

–0.2400–0.0790–0.03450.07260.0101–0.2072*–0.0043–0.0773
0.02970.03470.0372–0.0884–0.0109
0.1088Husband’s job
at marriage
P-M
N-M
S-E
FARM
S-M

–0.2862*–0.1599–0.1806–0.1450–0.0744

Age ofmarriage–0.0353**

Marital cohort
after 1971N% censored–2LL–0.2273–0.1370–0.1762–0.1504–0.0536–0.0294**
0.0347

945
1,061
1,002
973
1,061
1,061
973
8.18
8.01
8.08
8.22
8.01
8.01
8.22
10971.835 12423.758 11623.308 11218.165 12415.929 12429.667 11206.942

Key: P-M = Professional and managerial work
N-M = Nonmanual work
S-E = Self-employed
FARM = Farm work
S-M = Skilled manual work

* Significant at the 0.05 level.
** Significant at the 0.01 level.

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan59

who only completed junior high school; likewise, the probability of giving birth to achild was 25 percent lower for those who married men in professional ormanagerial positions, compared to those whose husbands held unskilled manual
jobs. Moreover, the older the age at marriage, the lower the birthrate. Yet the natureof a woman’s job before marriage—for instance, whether she had held aprofessional position or not—did not significantly influence the birthrate after
marriage in any way.5
Equation 7, which excludes the occupational variable for family backgroundand the woman’s occupation before marriage, shows that the influence of
education and the husband’s job at the time of marriage becomes insignificant.
Only the influence of age at marriage remains significant. Specifically, when
considered in relation to age, the influence of education on the birthrate
disappears and the influence of age becomes significant. In other words, thequestion of when or whether a woman is going to have children after marriage isstrongly related to her age, and there is no significant difference between
someone who has graduated from a university or has only completed junior highschool.6 Therefore, it is possible to suggest that the time of marriage is an
important demographic factor in determining the birth of children. The reason
why women with a higher education do not experience childbirth is less aquestion of socioeconomic factors (such as values instilled by a higher educationor the likelihood of obtaining a professional job) than it is their tendency topostpone marriage until they are older. If a woman undertakes the life event ofmarriage, then, reproductive behavior is largely determined by age.
3.3. Attitudes toward the Sexual Division of Labor and Educational BackgroundThe explanation that women’s higher education has contributed to a decline in thebirthrate is often based on the assumption that attitudinal differences—more
specifically, the rejection of the sexual division of labor—is behind this trend.
According to this view, as increasingly more women attain a higher education, attitudes
are becoming more liberal and negate the normative assumption of the sexual divisionof labor, which asserts that “men work outside, women in the home”; moreover, higher
5

6

Even if one adds the occupation after marriage instead of at the time of marriage, the results
are the same. However, because there were cases where respondents said that they were “notemployed” during the time of marriage (i.e., one year before and after marriage), and because
these cases decrease the sample of the analysis, I have used the occupation before the firstmarriage as a variable.
These findings do not correspond with T. Sasai’s (1998) conclusions, based on the 11th
Japanese National Fertility Survey in 1997, which indicate that the period between marriage andthe birth of the first child is longer for those with a higher education. I plan to make this asubject of future investigation.

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education may lead to a rejection of marriage or at least delay and strengthen the
pursuit of a career equal to that of men. In fact, the 1995 SSM survey shows a trend innegative attitudes toward the sexual division of labor the higher the level of education
obtained by both men and women. Thus it can be argued that individuals who havereceived a higher education tend to more readily reject the normative assumptions of
the sexual division of labor. This section explores how these attitudes concretely
influence such division by examining husbands’ participation in housework. The
relationship between attitudes and empirical facts is an important element in the studyof changes in young people’s attitudes and the declining birthrate; it also relates tothe issue of how the attainment of higher education is resolved in everyday life.
The 1995 SSM survey included questions to ascertain the degree of married men’s
involvement in three major areas of domestic labor: (1) food preparation and table
clearing, (2) housecleaning and laundry, and (3) child rearing.7 Table 7 shows theresults of the regression analyses of these three dependent variables. To eachdependent variable we added the explanatory variables of the person’s attitude toward
the sexual division of labor (with high scores for affirmative attitudes), his educational
background, and his wife’s work and age. The hypotheses used here were that,first, the stronger the man’s rejection of the sexual division of labor, the greater theextent of his participation in housework, and, second, a higher level of education
attained by his wife will lead to his higher level of participation in housework. With
regard to the wife’s employment, it was hypothesized that her greater involvement
Table 7 Regression analysis of husbands’ participation in housework
CoefficientStandard
Standard
Standard
Coefficient
Coefficient
Error
Error
Error

Constant

1.431*

0.175

1.481*

0.173

2.553*

0.215

Gender division–0.078*0.031–0.103*

0.031

0.001

0.038

Education

0.132*

0.033

0.080*

0.033

0.060

0.041

Wife’s work

0.050

0.047

0.063

0.046

–0.009

0.058

Age

0.002

0.002

0.001

0.002

–0.017*0.003

R2
Dependent variable

0.038

0.033

0.090

Food preparation

Cleaning

Child rearing* Significant at the 0.01 level.

7

The degree of involvement was indicated by one of three responses: (a) always, (b) sometimes,and (c) rarely. The highest degree of involvement was scored with 3, the lowest with 1. In
addition, to determine the influence of educational attainment generally, education was scoredfrom 3 to 1.

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan61

in work outside of the home will reinforce the husband’s participation inhousework, and that with respect to age, men’s resistance to housework will belower for younger people, while their degree of participation will be greater.
In the regression analysis of the dependent variables of food preparation andtable clearing, the variables having a significant influence on men’s participation
in food preparation were attitude toward the sexual division of labor andeducational background, whereas the effects of the wife’s work situation and age
were insignificant. Therefore, one might conclude that the stronger the husband’s
rejection of the sexual division of labor and the higher his educational
attainment, the higher the degree of his participation in food preparation.
In the case of housecleaning and laundry, it was found that attitudes toward
the sexual division of labor and educational background are a significant
influence. Whereas attitudes that reject or affirm the sexual division of laborseem to determine a husband’s actual participation in domestic labor, external
factors such as his wife’s job seem to have little influence on the extent of his
participation in cooking, cleaning, or laundry. Even if his wife works outside thehome, a husband with a conservative attitude will not help with housework.
Moreover, it appears that the wife’s work situation does not necessarily influence
the extent of her husband’s participation in housework. In other words, a wife
cannot expect her husband to take part in housework simply because she has ajob outside of the home.
With regard to a husband’s involvement in child rearing, attitudes toward thesexual division of labor and educational background do not have a significant
influence. Here, only age is important, while neither the rejection of the sexual
division of labor nor university education seem to have a bearing on husbands’
participation in this area. The results of the analysis indicate that age is a significant
determinant of a man’s participation in child rearing. Although involvement washigh for better-educated husbands, if one considers that the proportion ofuniversity graduates is larger among younger people, the effect of educational
background disappears. Based on the study’s findings, it is not possible to assertthat the degree of participation in child rearing is directly influenced by higher
education. In addition, it was surprising to find that a wife’s work situation makes
no difference in the level of her husband’s participation in child rearing.
Having examined husbands’ participation in domestic labor, taking into
consideration their views on the sexual division of labor, educational
background, and age, we can see the extent to which attitudes are more readilyreflected in real life. To be sure, the greater the increased participation in foodpreparation, cleaning, and laundry, the stronger was the tendency to reject thesexual division of labor and the higher the educational attainment; nevertheless,the same pattern could not be identified in the case of child rearing. It thus

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Sawako SHIRAHASE

seems that rather than higher education and changing attitudes, age differences
are of great importance in promoting men’s participation in child rearing.

4. Conclusion
In this paper I have discussed the influence of women’s increasing higher
educational credentials by focusing on the two life events of marriage and birth of
the first child. In addition, I have discussed the relationship between husbands’
attitudes toward the sexual division of labor and their actual degree ofparticipation in housework in connection with educational background, women’swork, and age. One of the most important effects that can be commonly found in
this study is age. Although we have confirmed that educational background is ofgreat importance with regard to reaching the life stage of marriage, the decision ofwhether to give birth or not, which is directly reflected in the declining birthrate,is strongly affected by a woman’s age at marriage. Moreover, concerning the ideaof promoting men’s assistance in housework as a policy to confront the declining
birthrate, it appears that the crucial issue of participation in child rearing is morestrongly associated with age than with either values or education.
According to M. Brinton (1988), the degree of age-specific timing of life eventsin Japan is high, and since the spread of the timing of these events is narrow,
age has great importance for the Japanese. She concludes that in determining thesocial status of women, the significance of socioeconomic attributes—e.g.,whether a woman has graduated from a university and her occupation—are low
compared to the United States, and that, therefore, the demographic factor of age
has an important meaning in Japan. That is, it can be said that the presence of asystematically and hierarchically ordered timetable based on age is weakening
the influence of socioeconomic factors such as educational background andoccupation. To be sure, the prevalence of higher education has played an
important role in changing attitudes. Nevertheless, based on the results of thisstudy, we can only confirm its limited influence on reproductive behavior andchild-rearing practices.
In other words, it can be argued that the construction of a timetable that lacks
flexibility has made the decisions to be taken at each life stage—i.e., whether tomarry or not, whether to continue to work or stop, or whether to bear a child or
not, a choice over conflicting options—and that this has given rise to a situation
where women do not want to have children. The declining birthrate reflects eachindividual’s social choices. If we are seriously concerned about why a woman
would choose not to have a child, we should go beyond simply alluding to theharmful effects of her higher education. Instead, it is necessary to take a more

Women’s Increased Higher Education and the Declining Fertility Rate in Japan63

holistic view, one that also considers men’s work habits and lifestyles.
In Japan, where the number of children born out of wedlock is extremely low,
as is the rate of cohabitation among young people, to have children and to marry
are concurrent decisions. In other words, to marry is a precondition for deciding
to have children. The more that marriage and childbirth are bound to a specifictimetable, the further will young women distance themselves from the marriage
state and the more likely that they will be forced into a situation where they will
not have any children. The creation of a more moderate social system that is able
to accommodate more flexible lifestyles could be the key to confronting thedeclining birthrate.

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