left home for work-related reasons are 36.7% and 35.8% in the generations born in the 1940s and 1950s, respectively, which are almost at the same level as those for leaving home for reasons of marriage. However, those leaving home for work-related reasons drastically decrease among the generations born in the 1960s and later and instead, the percentages of those leaving home in order to obtain higher education come to exceed 20% in each of the generations born in the 1950s and onward. In metropolitan areas, there are no changes in the basic pattern; marriage is the main reason for leaving home, while obtaining a higher education becomes the second-most important reason among the generations born in the 1960s and 1970s, accounting for nearly 20% of the stated responses and exceeding the percentage of leaving home for work-related reasons.

## V II Residence Five Years in the Future

Since the fourth survey, the Migration Surveys have been collecting data on the prospects for migration for the next five years in order to obtain information related to the future trends of migration. We realize that some reasons for migration are hard to foresee in advance, which may cause a discrepancy between the prospects and the actual migration. Nonetheless, the present survey includes a new question asking the respondents about possibilities of future migration in order to gauge their awareness of migration at the time of the survey to the greatest degree possible. In the following, the main results of information compiled on respondents' expected residence five years in the future are shown.

### 1. Prospects for Migration in the Next Five Years

First, concerning expected residence five years in the future, 13.8% $ ^{5} $ of the total respondents answered that they expected to be living “in a different place.” This percentage is significantly lower than the actual percentage of migration in the past five years shown in Chapter II (27.6%) and even lower than the prospect of migration in the next five years in the previous survey (16.4%). Judging solely from this expectation, it can be considered that rate of migration will decline in the future, but we should not make premature conclusions. For one thing, as the figures above indicate, the actual migration within the past five years is considerably higher than the prospect of migration for the coming five years in the previous survey. This phenomenon was also observed in the previous survey. It is thus considered that the actual rate of migration tends to end up higher than the prospect due to migration opportunities that people cannot anticipate at the time of survey. Second, the percentage of respondents who answered that their residence five years ahead is unknown as high as 16.6%, which is much higher than in the previous survey (11.0%). Taking these points into consideration, it is safe to say that there is a very high probability that the actual rate of migration in the coming five years will be higher than the prospect obtained in the present survey. At the same time, since the percentage of respondents who answered that they expect to be “in a different place” five years in the future, excluding those respondents who answered “location unknown,” is lower than the previous survey (18.4%) at 16.5%, it is difficult to assume that migration will increase in the near future.

Next, Figure VII-1 shows the percentages of respondents by age who answered that they expect to be “in a different place” five years later. This figure also shows the corresponding percentages obtained from the previous survey, excluding respondents who answered “location unknown.” In general, nearly identical distribution patterns by age can be observed in both surveys, but two differences can be pointed out by close examination. One point is that far fewer of the relatively young, in their early 20s to later 30s, stated in this survey that they expect to migrate, as compared to the previous survey. Since migration propensity of this age group is particularly high, it is considered a significant contributing factor to the overall decline of the migration prospect. The percentage also dropped in the age group below 10 years of age, but the majority of respondents in this age group can be expected to move together with their parents; it is thus safe to consider that their movements match with those of their parents’ generation. The other point of difference is that the migration prospect in this survey is conversely higher among the relatively old generations, who are in their 50s and up, than in the previous survey. This corresponds to the increasing trend of migration among the middle aged and the elderly groups observed in the past five years. The increase among respondents in the first half of their 70s to the first half of their 80s is particularly significant. As percentages of nuclear families among family types increase, the average number of household members per household has continued to fall, and the number of households consisting of elderly couples only or one-person households of the aged is rapidly increasing. Since the proportion of the number of samples in their 70s and older is not very high (14.8% of the total $ {}^{6} $ ), their increased migration prospects were not sufficient to increase.