Photo/Illutration A baby (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

The uncertain employment environment created by the COVID-19 pandemic made marriage less attractive for younger people, exacerbating the problem of the declining birthrate, experts said.

With the number of marriages having significantly dropped in 2023, too, when the country was moving from the pandemic to “normalcy,” experts expect the number of births to continue to decline as well.

“Young people’s willingness to get married has considerably declined,” said Takumi Fujinami, a senior chief researcher at the Japan Research Institute Ltd.

There were 537,583 marriages recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This was 78,069 fewer than the previous year, or a 12.7 percent drop.

In 2021, the number of marriages fell 4.3 percent.

But in 2022, it increased 1.1 percent, leading some to believe that the number of marriages had “bottomed out.”

The number of marriages then fell again, this time by a significant 5.9 percent to 489,281, falling below 500,000 for the first time since the end of World War II.

LACK OF INTEREST

The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research conducts a basic survey on birth trends every five years, in principle.

In the 2021 survey, of people aged between 18 and 34 who were single, 17.3 percent of men answered that they “have no intention of ever getting married.”

This was an increase of 5.3 points from the previous survey conducted in 2015.

The percentage of women increased by 6.6 points to 14.6 percent.

The percentage of men who thought that they “should have children after marriage” was 55.5 percent, while that of women was 36.6 percent.

Both figures decreased 20 to 30 points.

According to a future population projection (medium projection) the institute released in April 2023, the number of births is expected to remain flat until around 2030.

Fujinami said that “the downward trend in the number of births is likely to continue for some time,” noting that it is difficult for the number of marriages to suddenly rebound due to the changing attitudes of the younger generations.

Fujinami attributes the change in the number of marriages to the worsening employment environment caused by the pandemic.

“It is also true that there is this notion that marriage reduces happiness,” Fujinami said.

Nobuko Nagase, a professor of labor economics at Ochanomizu University, said she heard her students say things such as, “Having children means losing income and free time for myself” and, “In the end, only women have to take responsibility for child rearing.”

According to the latest basic survey on birth trends, the percentage of never-married women under 34 who answered that they “would continue working without getting married” skyrocketed from 21 percent in 2015 to 33.3 percent in 2021.

Nagase points to the current situation in which various responsibilities are unevenly placed on women as one of the reasons.

“In Japan, women bear the burden of child rearing, of balancing work and family, and of poverty in the event of divorce,” Nagase said. “It is essential for the future of Japan, with its aging population, to build a society in which the younger generations find child rearing attractive.”

The central government’s countermeasures for the declining birthrate include a policy to raise the benefit amount from the equivalent of 80 percent of the take-home pay to the equivalent of 100 percent if both parents take 14 or more days of leave.

While Fujinami appreciates these policies, he said “the preferential treatment for households with many children seems mismatched as a measure against the declining birthrate,” such as measures to increase the child allowance to 30,000 yen ($200) per month for the third child and thereafter and free college tuition for households with three or more children.

“It is important to approach the people who can’t even have their first child, who for economic reasons are reluctant to get married or have a baby,” he said.

(This article was written by Kenjiro Takahashi and Yasusaburo Nakamura.)

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