Ultra-Low Fertility in Pacific Asia: Trends, causes and policy issues

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Ultra-low Fertility in Pacific Asia

Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong SAR are among the very lowest-fertility countries in the whole world; even China has reached fertility levels lower than those in many European countries. If these levels continue over long periods, East Asia will soon face accelerating population decline, and in addition the changes in age distributions in such populations raise major new questions for planning of economic and social welfare. This book brings together work by noted experts on the low-fertility countries of East Asia with an up-to-date analysis of trends in fertility, what we know about their determinants and consequences, the policy issues and how these are being addressed in the various countries. Its role in bringing together information on policy trends and initiatives of a pro-natalist kind adopted over recent years in these countries is extremely important, as is the fact that the discussion of these pro-natalist policies is set in the context of a thorough analysis of what has driven fertility so low in these countries. Ultra-low Fertility in Pacific Asia is invaluable to students and scholars of East Asian public and social policy, as well as fertility studies more generally. Gavin Jones is Professor in the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, where he is research team leader on the changing family in Asia. Paulin Tay Straughan is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Sociology, and Vice-Dean at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Angelique Chan is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.

Routledge Research on Public and Social Policy in Asia Edited by M. Ramesh


National University of Singapore

1. Ultra-low Fertility in Pacific Asia Trends, causes and policy issues Edited by Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan and Angelique Chan

Ultra-low Fertility in Pacific Asia Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 05:43 01 December 2012

Trends, causes and policy issues

Edited by Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan and Angelique Chan


First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 5RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2009 Editorial selection and matter, Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan and Angelique Chan. Individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ultra-low fertility in Pacific Asia: trends, causes and policy dilemmas / editors: Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan and Angelique Chan. p. cm. – (Routledge research on public and social policy in Asia; 1) 1. East Asia—Population policy. 2. Pacific Area—Population policy. 3. Fertility, Human—East Asia. 4. Fertility, Human—Pacific Area. I. Jones, Gavin W. II. Straughan, Paulin Tay. III. Chan, Angelique Wei Ming. HB3650.5.A3U48 2008 304.6'32095–dc22 2008014894 ISBN 0-203-89006-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 13: 978-0-415-46884-8 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-89006-6 (ebk) ISBN 10: 0-415-46884-1 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0-203-89006-X (ebk)


Contents

List of figures and maps List of tables and appendices Contributors’ biographies Definition of terms Preface 1 Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries: causes and policy responses

vii x xii xvi xvii

1

GAVIN JONES, PAULIN Tay Straughan, and ANGELIQUE CHAN

2 Explanations of low fertility in East Asia: a comparative perspective

23

PETER MCDONALD

3 Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses

40

NAOHIRO OGAWA, ROBERT D. RETHERFORD, AND RIKIYA MATSUKURA

4 The arrival of low fertility in China

73

BAOCHANG GU

5 Socioeconomic development and fertility in the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea

96

DUDLEY L. POSTON, JR., HEATHER TERRELL KINCANNON, AND JUNGWON YOON

6 The 1997 Asian economic crisis and changes in the pattern of socioeconomic differentials in Korean fertility DOO-SUB KIM

110

vi Contents

7 Ultra-low fertility in Hong Kong: a review of related demographic transitions, social issues, and policies to encourage childbirth

132

PAUL YIP, C. K. LAW, and KAREN CHEUNG

8 Ultra-low fertility in Singapore: some observations

160


YAP MUI TENG

9 From population control to fertility promotion – a case study of family policies and fertility trends in Singapore

181

PAULIN Tay Straughan, ANGELIQUE CHAN, AND GAVIN JONES

10 Fertility in Pacific Asia: looking to the future

204

GAVIN JONES, PAULIN Tay Straughan, AND ANGELIQUE CHAN

Index

215


Figures and maps

Figures 3.1 Trends in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the Total Marital Fertility Rate (TMFR), and ideal family size (number of children), Japan, 1947–2005 3.2 Trends in Mean Age at Marriage (SMAM) by sex, Japan, 1950–2005 3.3 Trends in the synthetic proportion still single at age 50, by sex, 1951–2005 3.4 Trends in Period Parity Progression Ratios (PPPRs), Japanese women, 1950–2005 3.5 Mean Age at First Marriage (MAM), by sex, 1955–2002 3.6 Average age at first marriage for men, by education, 1955–2002 3.7 Average age at first marriage for women, by education, 1955–2002 3.8 Trends in the proportions of currently married women who worked before marriage and who worked for pay before marriage, Japan, 1955–2002 3.9 Trends in the proportion working in part-time jobs among paid employees age 20–29, by sex, 1972–2005 3.10 Trends in the proportion of firms reporting that they follow the lifetime-employment system, by firm size (number of employees), Japan, 1988–2002 3.11 Change in score for mate-selection criteria among single women, 1988–1998 3.12 Trends in the proportion of newly married couples who coresided with parents at the time of marriage, 1955–2002 3.13 Among currently married women who have had at least one birth and who worked before marriage, trends in the proportions who quit when they got married, who quit when they had a first birth, and who quit either when they got married or when they had a first birth, Japan, 1965–2002 3.14 Among single women not currently enrolled in school, trends in the proportions working part-time and full-time, 1990–2004

42 44 44 45 46 51 51 52 54 55 56 60

61 62


viii Figures and maps 3.15 Trends in proportion of women who were pregnant at the time of first marriage 3.16 Trends in mean age at marriage for those who were pregnant and those who were not at time of first marriage 3.17 Proportion who agree that husband should be breadwinner, wife should stay at home 3.18 Trends in the proportion of married women of reproductive age who took advantage of childcare leave, by year of child’s birth, 1980–2003 3.19 Among currently married women below age 50, trends in the proportions working full-time and part-time 4.1 Total fertility rate in China, 1950–2005 4.2 Population structure of China, 2000 (shaded) and 2050 4.3 Population structure of Shanghai, 2000 (shaded) and 2050 4.4 Population structure of Beijing, 2000 (shaded) and 2050 4.5 Infant mortality rate by sex and sex ratio of infant deaths in China for selected years, 1975–2002 5.1 Total fertility rates: China and South Korea, 1960–2005 6.1 Trends in the number of marriages and divorces, crude marriage rates, and crude divorce rates, 1981–2005 6.2 Trends in age-specific fertility rates, 1993–2005 6.3 CEB and post-1998 CEB by education of the couple, 2003 6.4 CEB by occupation of the couple, 2003 6.5 Post-1998 CEB by occupation of the couple, 2003 6.6 CEB by working status of the couple, 2003 6.7 Post-1998 CEB by working status of the couple, 2003 6.8 Post-1998 CEB by place of work of the couple, 2003 6.9 CEB by household income and family assets, 2003 6.10 Post-1998 CEB by household income and family assets, 2003 6.11 CEB of the two groups by wife’s place of work, 2003 6.12 CEB by the duration of work after marriage for the wife, 2003 6.13 CEB of the two groups by family assets, 2003 6.14 CEB of the two groups by status of housing ownership, 2003 7.1 Hong Kong: number of live births and TFR, 1961–2004 7.2 Age-specific fertility rates of Hong Kong, 1971–2004 7.3 Hong Kong: percentage distribution of live births by live-birth order, 1981–2003 7.4 Hong Kong: mean age of mothers by live-birth order, 1981–2003 7.5 Number of live births in Hong Kong to Mainland women whose spouses are Hong Kong residents (BSHKR), and live births with both parents being Chinese nationals but not Hong Kong residents (BnotHKR), 2001–2004 7.6 Proportion of live births in Hong Kong by parentage, 2001–2004 7.7 Average number of children ever born by the mother’s year of birth and age, Hong Kong

62 63 68 68 70 76 87 88 88 90 96 112 113 117 118 118 119 120 121 122 122 124 124 125 126 135 136 137 137

138 139 140


Figures and maps ix 7.8 Age-specific marital fertility rates of Hong Kong, 1971–2001 7.9 Proportions of never-married population by age and sex, Hong Kong, 1981–2001 7.10 General marriage rate and number of marriages, Hong Kong, 1971–2004 7.11 Median age of first marriage by sex, Hong Kong, 1981–2004 7.12 Median age for first marriage among women and interval between marriage and first-order live birth, Hong Kong, 1981–2001 7.13 Number of successful applicants for certificate of no-marriage registration (CAMR), Hong Kong, 1990–2003 7.14 Proportion of live births in Hong Kong by cohabitating parents, 1981–2003 7.15 Number of divorce decrees granted and the general divorce rate, Hong Kong, 1981–2001 7.16 Abortion to live-birth ratio, Hong Kong, 1992–2003 8.1 Live births and total fertility rate, 1957–2005 8.2 Age-specific marriage rates, male and female, 1980–2005 8.3 Age-specific fertility rates, 1980–2005 8.4 Proportion married among resident females, 2000–2005 8.5 Resident marital fertility rates, 2000–2005 8.6 TFR and GDP growth/unemployment rates, 1980–2005 10.1 Trends in percentage of population in two broad age groups

141 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 151 161 162 166 167 167 172 207

Maps 4.1 Geographic distribution of policy fertility, prefecture level, China, late 1990s 4.2 Policy-required fertility level by broad economic regions, China, late 1990s

77 81


Tables and appendices

Tables 1.1 Trends in Total Fertility Rates and projected population growth, selected East Asian countries 1.2 Delays in reversing anti-natalist policies, selected East Asian countries 1.3 Labor-force participation rates for females in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, certain age groups, 1960–2000 2.1 Total Fertility Rates, 2005 2.2 Women aged 30–34, percentages never married and percentages never married and not cohabiting, selected countries 3.1 Model estimates of proportion of women still single at age 40, by education, childhood residence, and year of survey, Japan, 1990–2000 3.2 Men’s income and women’s expectations of prospective husband’s income, never-married persons age 25–34 in Hirosaki-shi in Aomori prefecture and Nerima-ku ward in Tokyo, 2003 3.3 Proportion never married among men age 25–34 by work status and annual income in Hirosaki-shi in Aomori prefecture and Nerima-ku ward in Tokyo, 2003 3.4 Major Japanese government actions aimed at raising fertility 4.1 Population changes in China, 2000–2006 4.2 Age-specific fertility rates and total fertility rate in China, 2000–2005 4.3 Demographic distribution of fertility policy, China, late 1990s 4.4 Policy fertility and observed fertility of China’s provinces, c. 2000 4.5 Respondents’ answers to attitude questions on family and having children, Jiangsu survey, end 2006 4.6 Reproductive ideal and reproductive desire, Jiangsu survey, end 2006 4.7 Factors to consider for having a second child, women aged 18–40 who are qualified to have two children, Jiangsu survey, end 2006

4 7 13 25 30 49 57 57 64 74 75 78 79 84 85 86

Tables and appendices xi


4.8 5.1

Life expectancy by sex in China for selected years, 1981–2002 Descriptive statistics, fertility rates: 2,870 counties of China in 2000, and 231 counties of South Korea in 2004 5.2 Multiple regression coefficients for the TFR on DTT independent variables: 2,432 counties and county equivalents of China, 2000 5.3 Multiple regression coefficients for the GFR on socioeconomic status, female status, and cultural values variables: 231 counties of Korea, 2004 6.1 Demographic profiles of the study population, 2003 6.2 Distribution of educational attainment and occupation of the two study groups, 2003 8.1 Total Marriage Rate (per 1,000 unmarried singles) 8.2 Proportions single by age and sex (percent) 8.3 Proportions single by age, sex, and educational attainment (percent) 8.4 Proportions single by age, sex, and ethnic group (percent) 8.5 Decomposition of TFR change, 2000–2005 8.6 Total Fertility Rates by ethnic group 8.7 Mean number of children born among ever-married resident females 8.8 Mean number of children born by resident ever-married females aged 40–49 by ethnic group 8.9 Mean number of children born among ever-married resident females aged 40–49 by education 8.10 Some trends in Singapore’s human resources 9.1 Summary of Singapore family policies and TFR, 1980–present 9.2 Macro data on economic health and employment 9.3 Bivariate correlations between TFR and economic-health indicators 9.4 Regression model predicting TFR – macro factor 9.5 Awareness of pro-family policies announced by the Government at the end of 2004 9.6 Perception of and attitudes towards pro-family policies 9.7 Items in scale measuring extrinsic expectations of child 9.8 Marital satisfaction scale 9.9 A Logistic regression model predicting future procreation decision, performance of model 9.9 B Logistic regression model predicting likelihood of having child in future 10.1 United Nations population projections: world and selected regions and countries, 2005–2050

89 98 102 104 114 115 163 163 164 165 168 168 169 169 170 170 188 191 191 192 193 194 194 195 196 196 205

Appendices 8

Chronological development of pro-natalist measures in Singapore 176


Contributors’ biographies

Angelique Chan is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. She obtained her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan, Population Studies Center. Dr Chan has been researching aging issues since 1990 when she began studying living arrangements of older adults in Malaysia and subsequently Singapore. Recently, she has been focusing on health issues among the aged, specifically, gender and socioeconomic differentials in health status among older adults in Singapore and the region. Her published works include articles and chapters focusing on aging in Singapore and comparative analyses of Singapore with other South-East Asian countries. Karen S. L. Cheung is a visiting scholar in the Division of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is a demographer specializing in studies of mortality, population health, and longevity. She was a research associate at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, INSERM)/ the Health and Demography team (L’équipe démographie et santé). She earned her post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Demography, University of Rome “La Sapienza,” Italy, after her PhD at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Baochang Gu received his PhD in Sociology and Demography at the University of Texas in 1986. He is a Professor of Demography at Renmin University of China, and holds adjunct professor positions in a number of other universities. His committee memberships include WHO’s Specialist Panel for Social Science and Operations Research on Reproductive Health, the IUSSP Panel on low fertility, the Population Advisory Committee of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC), the Specialist Panel on Reproductive Health, Ministry of Health (MOH), and the standing Council of the China Population Association. He has also served as Deputy Executive Director and Director of International Cooperation at China Family Planning Association (2001–2004), as Senior Associate at the Population Council, New York (1998–2000), and Associate Director of China Population Information and Research Center (1990–1998).


Contributors’ biographies xiii Gavin Jones is Professor in the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, where he is research team leader on the changing family in Asia. After completing his PhD degree at the ANU in 1966, he joined the Population Council, where he worked first in New York, then in Thailand and Indonesia, before returning to Australia. He was then with the Demography and Sociology Program at the Australian National University for 28 years, serving as head of program for an 8-year period. Professor Jones has conducted joint research with many colleagues in South-East Asia. He has a long-standing interest in the formulation and evolution of population policy in the region. His research interest in recent years has focused especially on very low fertility regimes in Asia, delayed marriage, non-marriage, and cross-boundary marriage, and the dynamics of population and employment change in mega-urban regions of Asia. He has served as consultant to many international agencies, and has published about 20 books and monographs and some 130 refereed journal articles and book chapters. Doo-Sub Kim is Professor of Sociology, Hanyang University, Korea. He is also President, Population Association of Korea and Director, Institute of Population and Aging Research, Hanyang University. His current research focuses on low fertility, population aging, and marriage migration in Asia. He received his MA in Sociology from the Seoul National University and PhD from Brown University. He also has research and teaching experience at the East-West Center, Seoul National University, University of Oxford, University of Iowa, and University of British Columbia. He has published 26 books and monographs and some 80 journal articles and book chapters. His latest publication includes The 1997 Asian Economic Crisis and Changes in Korean Fertility. In recognition of his active consultation to the Korean government as well as academic contributions, he was recently awarded the Order of Service Merit from the President of Korea. Heather Terrell Kincannon is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. She holds an MS degree in sociology and demography from Texas A&M University. Her dissertation research deals with the patterns and dynamics of inter-racial marriage. Her prior research focused on socioeconomic development and fertility in China. Chi Kin Law has a post-doctoral appointment in the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Hong Kong. His areas of expertise are in demography, public health, and health economics. His PhD thesis at the University of Hong Kong was about Hong Kong’s demographic transition. Subsequently, he obtained further training at the World Health Organization (Geneva). Rikiya Matsukura is a staff researcher at the Nihon University Population Research Institute and a lecturer at the Advanced Research Institute for Science and Humanities, Nihon University. He has been a guest researcher and lecturer at the Statistical Research and Training Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, from 2002 to the present. He also spent a

xiv Contributors’ biographies


year (2005–2006) as a collaborative researcher at the Japanese Government’s Institute of Statistical Mathematics. He has more than 20 years of experience in statistical research and his research areas include the development of statistical methods for complicated models and the application of these methodologies to social science. He has published articles in journals such as Population and Development Review, The Japanese Economy, Asian Population Studies, and Asia-Pacific Population Journal. Peter McDonald is Professor of Demography at the Australian National University. He has been elected Vice President (2006–2009) and President (2010–2013) of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, the international association of professional demographers. He is frequently consulted on the issue of population futures (causes, consequences, and policies) by governments around the world, especially in Australia, Europe, and East Asia. He is a leading expert on policies, including labor-supply policies, for countries facing very low fertility rates. His work has changed the nature of the population debate in Australia by bringing demographic realities into a debate that had relied mainly on rhetoric. He has been highly influential in work and family policy and labor-supply futures policy. His theoretical work on the causes of very low fertility rates is widely cited in academic papers and meetings and acknowledged by governments around the world, which are addressing the problems associated with very low fertility rates. Naohiro Ogawa is Director of the Population Research Institute of Nihon University, Tokyo. He is also Professor of Population Economics at the Advanced Research Institute for the Sciences and Humanities of Nihon University. Over the last 25 years, he has written numerous academic papers and books on population and development in Japan and other Asian nations. His many papers have been published in internationally respected journals including Population and Development Review, Population Studies, American Economic Review, and Journal of Labor Economics. Dudley L. Poston, Jr. is Professor of Sociology, Director of Asian Studies, and the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Endowed Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. He holds Adjunct Professorships at Renmin University, Fuzhou University, and Nanjing Normal University. His research focuses on the demography of China and South Korea, the demography of homosexuality, and the social demography of gender. Robert D. Retherford is Coordinator of Population and Health Studies at the East-West Center and Affiliate Graduate Faculty in Sociology at the University of Hawaii. He joined the East-West Center in 1970 after receiving his PhD in Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. His current research focuses on below-replacement fertility, population aging, and a variety of maternal and child-health issues in Asia. His current work on below-replacement fertility and population aging focuses on Japan and China. His current work on maternal and child health focuses mainly on India. He has also done

Contributors’ biographies xv


previous research on the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. His work at the University of Hawaii involves teaching graduate courses and supervising students in the University’s Population Studies Program. Paulin Tay Straughan is an Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Sociology, and Vice-Dean at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of Singapore. Her research interests include medical sociology and health-care systems, with a special focus on preventive health (especially cancer prevention), the importance of social-support networks in health-related issues, sociology of the family, work–family relations and fertility, and aging. She is currently researching Singapore’s fertility trends; and divorce in Singapore. She is also a Co-principal Consultant for the National Survey of Elderly in Singapore. Yap Mui Teng is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, where she leads research in the area of demography and family. Her current research interests include policy responses to low fertility in Singapore and elsewhere, policies on the aged, migration policies, and poverty alleviation policies. She worked as a statistician at the Population Planning Unit, Ministry of Health, before joining IPS in 1989. She was a Research Fellow at the Population Institute, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, after graduating with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Hawaii. Prior to that, she worked as a statistician at the Research and Evaluation Unit, Singapore Family Planning and Population Board. Paul Yip is a Professor in social work and social administration at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). His areas of expertise are in biostatistics, demography, and population health. He is also the director of the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at HKU. He is a member of the working group of the population policy of the Hong Kong Government and a Council and Executive member of the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong. Jungwon Yoon is currently a PhD candidate in the history and sociology of technology and science program at Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned a Master’s degree in sociology from Texas A&M University. Her recent research focuses on social studies of science and technology, including human resources in science and technology, the digital divide, and the development of information technology in Asian developing countries. Her prior research focused on the pattern of low fertility in South Korea.


Definition of terms

This book is meant to be accessible to the general reader, but there are necessarily some demographic terms and analysis of a more specialized nature. We have tried to keep these to a minimum. In order to facilitate the general reader’s navigation of the book, we provide here definitions of the key demographic measures that are widely used throughout the book. Other specialized measures used less widely in the book are defined where they occur. Age-specific fertility rate (ASFR) The ASFR in a particular calendar year is calculated as the number of births that occurred during the year to women of a given age, divided by the mid-year number of women of the same age. Total fertility rate (TFR) The TFR is widely used throughout this book, and is also the measure of fertility most commonly used by policymakers. It can be understood as the number of births a woman would have by age 50 if she lived through her reproductive period experiencing the age-specific fertility rates that prevailed in the population in the particular calendar year. In other words, it is a hypothetical cohort measure based on the fertility experience of women in a particular year. The TFR is calculated by summing the ASFRs (births per woman per year at each age) between the ages of 15 and 50. Replacement-level fertility This term refers to the level of fertility that, if continued over time, would result in a population (closed to migration) reproducing itself exactly, resulting in a steady-state population, neither growing nor declining. The level of TFR corresponding to replacement level depends on the level of mortality in the population, but in the populations being studied in this book, a TFR of 2.1 approximates the replacement level. It is important to be aware that in the short to medium term (which can be as long as several decades), low-mortality populations with TFR of 2.1 can be growing or declining, sometimes quite substantially, as a result of wide differences in their age and sex structures. But if this fertility level is continued long enough, age-structure differences between populations will gradually disappear, and in the long run they will be exactly replacing themselves.


Preface

The issue of ultra-low fertility in Pacific Asia appears to have crept up on the world’s consciousness surreptitiously. Within the region it receives considerable attention from the media and from policymakers. But outside of the region there does not appear to be much awareness of it. No doubt this can be partly explained by the recency of ultra-low fertility in Pacific Asian countries. In Europe, very low fertility was in place in a number of countries well before the end of the twentieth century. By contrast, the movement to very low levels of fertility in Pacific Asian countries – with the exception of Japan and Hong Kong SAR – has been very recent, in the first five years of the twenty-first century. Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong SAR are now among the lowest-fertility countries in the whole world, and even China has reached fertility levels lower than those in many European countries. Fertility has sunk so low in many East Asian countries that if these levels continue over long periods, populations will face accelerating population decline not very far into the future. Aside from this, changes in age distributions in such populations raise major new questions for planning of economic and social welfare. The best-recognized prospect raised by ultra-low fertility is population aging, which brings with it an entirely new set of issues, for example, increasing old-age dependency ratios, financing old age and old-age health care, continuing familial support of the elderly, and elderly political participation. Existing pro-natalist policies do not appear to be having much effect in these countries, and although governments realize that more needs to be done to encourage fertility, exactly what should be done remains elusive. Part of this elusiveness stems from a lack of information on what motivates people in Asia to marry in the first place, and once married, to have, or not have, children. The three editors have been studying determinants of low fertility in Singapore for some time, and had the opportunity in February 2007 to bring together some of the world experts on low fertility in Asian countries at a small conference, funded by the National University of Singapore. The decision was then taken to publish a book comprising revised versions of some of the papers presented at the conference, together with some additional commissioned papers. The editors have prepared a concluding chapter to complete the book. The need for such a book is very clear. It is indeed surprising, in view of the


xviii Preface extreme concern governments of the ultra-low-fertility countries of Pacific Asia are showing about this situation, that there has been no recent book summarizing the trends and dealing with their causes and the policy issues arising from them. Two useful earlier studies (Richard Leete and Iqbal Alam, eds, The Revolution in Asian Fertility: Dimensions, Causes and Implications, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993; and Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs and UNFPA, Low Fertility and Policy Responses to Issues of Ageing and Welfare, Seoul: Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, 2000) dealt with some of the issues, but both publications examined Asian countries as a whole, thus failing to focus specifically on the issues faced in common by the ultra-low-fertility countries. Both books also pre-dated the sharp further fall in fertility that has taken place in these countries over the first five years of the twenty-first century. The present volume fills this need by bringing together papers by noted experts on the low-fertility countries of East Asia with an up-to-date analysis of trends in fertility, what we know about their determinants and consequences, the policy issues, and how these are being addressed in the various countries. It is thus both comprehensive and focused. Not only does it bring together information on policy trends and initiatives of a pro-natalist kind adopted over recent years in these countries, but it sets these in the context of a thorough analysis of what has driven fertility so low in these countries. In preparing this book for publication, we are indebted to many people. First of all, the National University of Singapore has provided the resources and supportive environment in which our own research has been able to take place. The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Asia Research Institute contributed the funds for the conference which provided the starting point for this book. We have received excellent support from our research assistant, Windel Lacson, and Farheen Mukri has given editorial assistance to prepare the papers for publication. Finally, the editors at Routledge, Stephanie Rogers and Leanne Hinves, have been enthusiastic about the book and have given us every assistance to arrange its timely publication. Gavin W. Jones Paulin Tay Straughan Angelique Chan Singapore, February 2008

1

Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries


Causes and policy responses Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan Introduction Only 40 years ago, population experts were still worried about a population explosion that would threaten the future of humanity. Fortunately, while population growth is currently largely under control, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia still face massive increases with very serious potential consequences.1 Paradoxically, however, a new problem is emerging, with its key locus in Pacific Asia (the term used in this book to refer to Asian countries with a Pacific littoral). This problem is ultra-low fertility. Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Hong Kong SAR are among the very lowest-fertility countries in the whole world, and even China has reached fertility levels lower than those in many European countries. Fertility has sunk so low in many East Asian countries that if these levels continue over long periods, populations will face accelerating population decline not very far into the future. Not only this, but changes in age distributions in such populations raise major new questions for planning of economic and social welfare. The best-recognized prospect raised by ultra-low fertility is population aging, which brings with it an entirely new set of issues, for example, increasing old-age dependency ratios, financing old age and old age health care, continuing familial support of the elderly and elderly political participation. But there are many others, for example, the decline in size and changing age structure of the workforce, and the declining visibility of and perhaps attention paid to the needs and interests of children and young people. Existing pro-natalist policies do not appear to be having much effect in these countries, and although governments realize that more needs to be done to encourage fertility, exactly what should be done remains elusive. Part of this elusiveness stems from a lack of information on what motivates people in Asia to marry in the first place, and once married, to have, or not have, children. (The route of bearing children without marrying is a little-travelled one in Asian countries, and not socially sanctioned.) Though the shift in emphasis in population policy from anti-natalism to pro-natalism in some Asian countries over the course of just a decade or two is striking, the underlying issue is the same: whether governments have a legitimate interest in nudging fertility rates in desired directions, and if so, how policies designed to

2 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan accomplish this relate to family and social policy. Thus, it is of some relevance to recapitulate briefly the history of anti-natalist policies.


The case for fertility reduction in high-fertility countries The general consensus among economists has been that there are social and economic benefits to be achieved by reducing fertility rates in high-fertility conditions. The literature on this is vast, but three references summarizing the received wisdom are National Research Council, 1986 (which drew very cautious conclusions), Cassen, 1994, and Birdsall, Kelley and Sinding, 2001. Thus, although there have always been dissenters (for example, Simon, 1981), the consensus among most economists over the most active period of family planning efforts was that governments are justified in taking active steps to bring birth rates down – in the interest of the welfare of future generations. The economic case for family planning was bolstered by the arguments of environmentalists, and those dealing with issues of food and water availability (see Pimentel, et al., 1999; Alexandratos, 2005; Falkenmark, 1997). Family planning programs were seen as the most direct route to achieving the goal of fertility reduction. They were designed to make information on contraception more readily available, and to facilitate the adoption of contraception by couples wishing to do so (Seltzer, 2002). Studies that estimated “unmet need” for contraception indicated that many couples at risk of pregnancy and who did not want any more children were not doing anything to protect themselves from pregnancy. Satisfying this unmet need was seen as appropriate in both meeting people’s expressed needs and in lowering the overall level of fertility (see, for example, Sinding, Ross, and Rosenfield, 1994; Casterline and Sinding, 2000). Many family planning programs went well beyond the mere supply of information and services, engaging in campaigns to persuade people of the advantages of delayed marriage and small family size. But there are other routes as well – arguably more fundamental ones – to low fertility. Studies dealing with the determinants of fertility show consistently that fertility is inversely related to education of women, for example. In general terms, fertility is inversely related to levels of economic development and (a somewhat different indicator) human development (see UNFPA, 2003: 4), and an ongoing debate is therefore about whether “development is the best contraceptive” (the slogan adopted by many at the World Population Conference in 1974), or whether the urgency of reducing birth rates calls for more direct measures. Finally, to confuse the situation even more, there are countries (Myanmar a notable example) where fertility has fallen to fairly low levels without either much evidence of development or the assistance of an official family planning program. Two key problems with the family planning approach were:

•• In its implementation by governments that perceived (and were pressed by

donors to perceive) the lowering of population growth as an overriding goal, the basic rights of the population were often given second place.2

Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries 3

•• Family planning programs had limited success in settings in which religious


opposition was not effectively counteracted, and where economic development was sluggish and not effectively felt by the masses (examples include Pakistan, the Philippines, and parts of Latin America).

Over the past decade, demographic trends have taken the wind out of the sails of the population-control movement. Fertility rates have fallen consistently across the world, though Africa and parts of South Asia are regions where fertility remains high, massive population increases are still in prospect, and the effect of this on human well-being requires ongoing attention. Still, population projections by the United Nations now show world population peaking at below 10 billion, whereas figures closer to 15 billion had earlier been thought likely.

The collapse of fertility in East Asia and the delayed switch to pro-natalist policies There is now an interesting mix of situations in the world: in some countries, lowered fertility is arguably crucial to sustainability and the well-being of populations; in others, increased fertility is arguably equally critical to future wellbeing; in others, a laissez-faire approach to fertility seems justified. In the first two groups of countries, the issue of whether, and if so how, governments should become involved in matters that are frequently argued to be private and confined to the bedroom continues to exercise the minds of government planners. The second group – countries needing to increase fertility – includes countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan. Over the past five years or so, fertility in the first four of these countries has fallen to levels below those of almost all countries in Europe. There is controversy about where China and Thailand fit: needing to reduce fertility further or needing to raise it. Table 1.1 gives a brief summary of the population prospects faced by some of these countries. It shows that Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have now reached such low fertility levels that population declines have begun or are in prospect. The momentum towards a shrinking of population, inherent in the age structure and fertility levels, is well documented for these countries. In particular, they face sharp contractions in numbers in the adolescent and young-adult age groups, the key age groups affecting the size and dynamism of the workforce. Only a sharp rise in fertility or very high levels of immigration (the latter to some extent built into United Nations projections for Singapore and Hong Kong SAR) could prevent population decline. Politicians and planners in these countries are viewing ultra-low fertility as a “crisis”. It is important to note that some four or five decades ago, four of these East Asian countries with ultra-low fertility (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) were facing high fertility and rapid population growth; all of them were considered densely populated, and their governments were very concerned at the prospect of rapid population growth. It is not surprising, then, that they were pioneers in adopting policies to reduce fertility, including family planning

4 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan Table 1.1 Trends in Total Fertility Rates and projected population growth, selected East Asian countries


Total Fertility Rates 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 Projected % growth, UN medium projection, 2005–30* Population 15–64 age group 15–24 age group Projected % growth, UN low projection, 2005–30* Population 15–64 age group 15–24 age group

Japan 1.42 1.43 1.39 1.38 1.34 1.36 1.33 1.32 1.29 1.29 1.25 1.32

South Korea 1.64 1.70 1.54 1.47 1.42 1.47 1.30 1.17 1.17 1.16 1.08 1.13

Taiwan 1.78 1.76 1.77 1.47 1.56 1.68 1.40 1.34 1.24 1.18 1.12 1.12

Singapore 1.67 1.66 1.61 1.47 1.47 1.60 1.41 1.37 1.25 1.24 1.25 1.26

Hong Kong SAR n.a. 1.19 1.12 1.02 0.98 1.04 0.93 0.94 0.90 0.93 0.97 0.98

–4.3 –17.0 –20.0

2.8 –8.7 –36.9

n.a. n.a. n.a.

20.2 –0.3 –25.2

22.3 4.2 –15.3

–9.9 –19.8 –37.7

–4.3 –12.2 –53.1

n.a. n.a. n.a.

12.7 –3.3 –42.3

13.0 0.9 –38.2

Source: Japan: Ministry of Health and Welfare, Vital Statistics, various years; Korea: June 2004, Table 3.6; Hong Kong: Census and Statistics Department, The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (using resident population approach); Taiwan Province of China: Tsay, 2003. Figures for 2003–2006 from Department of Household Registration Affairs, Ministry of Interior; Singapore: Singapore Department of Statistics, various years. * United Nations Population Division, 2006.

programs (Robinson and Ross (eds), 2007). Japan’s situation was different, in that it had already reached replacement-level fertility at that time. The history of population policies in the other four countries, adopted to deal with a situation contrasting so sharply with the current demographic prospects they face, should be kept in mind in understanding delays in altering policies to respond to changing circumstances, as discussed below. Governments in ultra-low-fertility countries are now arguing that raising birth rates is crucial for national survival and welfare. But the change from anti-natalist to pro-natalist policies did not come easily. Singapore was the first government in the region to reverse anti-natalist policies. The long lag in recognizing the need for policy change meant that the reorganization of policy was abrupt, and somewhat shocking to the general public, who had long grown used to anti-natalist messages. Singapore’s fertility fell to replacement level in 1975, but it was not until 1986 that the first signs of a change in policy were seen, with a government


Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries 5 announcement of plans to review population policies and dialogue sessions with the public. Pro-natalist measures were finally introduced in 1987, 12 years after replacement fertility had been reached and with fertility close to 25 percent below replacement level.3 The curious result of the haste in which the policy changes were made was that almost overnight anti-natalist messages were replaced by pro-natalist measures on the nation’s bus stops and other places, presumably to the bemusement of a populace well primed to follow the exhortations of a seemingly omniscient government. The Korean government showed a similar reluctance to modify policies after fertility fell below replacement level in 1984. By 1990, fertility was well below replacement level, prompting a debate on population policies. Those supporting continuation of fertility control argued that the current level of low fertility is mostly due to the strong population control policies and the change of policies would bring the fertility level up resulting in rapid population growth again, slowing down economic growth and effecting heavy burdens on environment and resources. Those supporting the relaxation of fertility control policies argued that the socioeconomic conditions of Korea have changed greatly resulting in changes in attitudes and values towards preference for small size families. They also argued that further decline in fertility would result in rapid population aging and increasing burden of support for the elderly. (Choe and Park, 2005: 8) It was not until 1996 that the emphasis of population policy was shifted from population control to quality and welfare of the population, one of the aims being to prevent fertility from declining further from its level of 1.7 at that time. Taiwan’s fertility had been below replacement level for eight years before a new population policy statement was issued by the Executive Yuan, calling for raising fertility to replacement levels. However, there were no explicit proposals as to how to raise the marriage rate or the birth rate. In an assessment of this policy, Freedman and Freedman (1993: 28) wrote: “We see nothing in the new policy statement that is likely to have an effect on fertility levels, one way or the other. Therefore, the balance of the existing pro-natalist and anti-natalist influences in the society are likely to determine what actually happens”. It was not until 2006, 22 years after fertility fell below replacement level, that any national-level pronatalist policies were introduced, although a few county-level administrative units had introduced small-scale pro-natalist measures. Japan followed a different fertility trajectory, having experienced belowreplacement-level fertility over the 1970s and 1980s. Although, unlike the other countries, it did not have anti-natalist policies to reverse, it was not until it reached a record low TFR of 1.57 in 1990 that the government started looking into possible measures to reverse the downward trend. As for China, the implementation of the “one-child policy” after 1979 has been greatly modified over time, and the “one-child policy” these days applies


6 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan to only 35 percent of China’s population (Gu, Chapter 4, this volume). Nevertheless, China’s population policy remains clearly anti-natalist. There is controversy over China’s current fertility levels, but it is clear that fertility is so far below replacement level that China is actually in much the same position that Singapore was in 1975: namely, of having succeeded in the policy of fertility reduction, but being slow to “take off the brakes” when fertility slid well below replacement level. In China, many interpret the slide in fertility to well below replacement level as a sign of success. On the other hand, the population structure, aging and other issues arising from recent low fertility levels (compounded by the distorted age structures inherited as a legacy of past events – notably the planning disaster of the “Great Leap Forward” – and changing population policy) have been well publicized in the literature. Many demographers and economists are now arguing that pro-natalist policies are needed (Wang Feng, 2005; Zeng Yi, 2007). But government leaders and the population-control establishment have been slow to change their mindset. In February 2008, the Vice Minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission did announce that China is considering “incrementally” lifting limits on the number of children a couple can have – an announcement that appeared to be subsequently rebutted by Premier Wen Jiabao (Straits Times, March 6, 2008). But even the initial announcement indicated a weakening of anti-natalist measures, rather than foreshadowing a switch to pro-natalism. There is therefore a fascinating history with respect to the change of government policy in East Asian countries in response to changing demographic circumstances. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and China all had long-standing policies to lower fertility, centered on family planning programs. Their delays in reversing policy can be summarized by noting the number of years that their TFR had fallen below replacement level, and the percentage below replacement reached at the time policy was altered, as shown in Table 1.2. It should be noted that in the cases of South Korea and Taiwan, though policies were modified at earlier points in time, it was more than 20 years after the replacement fertility level was breached that more serious pro-natalist measures were introduced. The same may well turn out to be the case in China. Why the delay? There were probably three main reasons:

•• Demographic momentum meant that population kept increasing despite

•• ••

below-replacement fertility, thus seemingly obviating the need to modify or reverse policy. This is certainly a major reason for the continuation of a strongly anti-natalist policy in China. Inertia and the entrenched bureaucratic interests and mindsets of agencies entrusted with anti-natalist policies and leaders who had been promoting anti-natalist policies. A deficiency in the theory of demographic transition. Little attention was given to what happens after fertility reaches replacement level, and the assumption prevailed that fertility would not fall far below replacement (Demeny, 1997). The United Nations Population Division population projections for a

Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries 7 Table 1.2 Delays in reversing anti-natalist policies, selected East Asian countries


Country

Year in which replacement fertility was reached

Year in which Number % below Comments anti-natalist of years replacement policy was elapsed when policy reversed reversed

Singapore 1975 South Korea 1984

1987 1996

12 12

25 20

South Korea 1984

2004

20

50

Taiwan

1984

1992

8

20

Taiwan

1984

2006

22

47

Japan

19731

1990

17

25

China

1992

No reversal

16 (+)

—

— Very mildly pro-natalist policies More serious pro-natalist measures Pro-natalist statement but no measures Specific pro-natalist measures under consideration Mildly pro-natalist measures 25% below replacement in 2007; policy not altered

Actually, Japan’s TFR was slightly below replacement level as early as the 1950s, but it hovered around that level for two decades, and did not fall definitively below replacement level until 1973.

1

long time assumed, against all the evidence, that TFRs that had sunk below replacement level, even well below this level, would gradually rebound to replacement level. This added official weight to the idea that there was no need for a policy response to very low fertility.

Pro-natalist policies, family policy and social policy in the very low-fertility countries Before giving some details about pro-natalist policies in Asian countries, we will set these in a broader context by looking first at some aspects of family policy in general, and considering how it has been used in European low-fertility countries. One thing to keep in mind is that, unlike in East Asia, “in most European countries overt population-policy measures would meet resistance rather than acclamation among the population” (Neyer, 2003: 49). But family policy measures are an acceptable means of encouraging child-bearing. Of course, family policies are difficult to conceptualize and measure, and represent a diverse range of policy objectives. The primary purpose is not always connected to child-bearing and child-raising as such. Because of this diversity, “family policies may encompass inconsistent or even divergent aims” (Neyer, 2003: 51). McDonald (2002: 435) classifies policies directed toward the reversal of low fertility into three broad categories:

8 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan


•• financial incentives •• support for parents to combine work and family •• broad social change supportive of children and parenting. The first category includes child benefits (public transfers paid for children). The second includes such items as maternity-leave policies, parental-leave policies (leaves of absence from employment granted parents by law in order to take care of their child during the first few years of life), and childcare services (offered by the state, the market, employers or non-profit institutions). The extent to which support of these kinds is provided to parents varies greatly between European countries, largely according to the kind of welfare-state regime they follow. Common classifications of welfare-state regimes in Europe distinguish between universalistic welfare states (the Nordic countries), conservative welfare states (continental European countries), liberal welfare states (Anglo-Saxon countries), and Southern European welfare states (see, for example, Gauthier, 2002, Table 1). Conservative welfare states rely heavily on familialism – that is, on the family as a provider of welfare. Southern European countries display an even higher degree of familialism. In this respect, Southern European countries clearly have an important element in common with the East Asian countries currently facing the issue of how to raise birth rates, to match the other element they share in common: that of having the lowest levels of fertility in the world. It has been argued persuasively by McDonald (2000a; 2000b) that the sharing of these two common elements is not accidental; it is precisely their familialism, in the context of widened educational and employment opportunities for women, that poses strong conflicts of interest for women and leads to delayed marriage and low levels of child-bearing. To return to the Asian countries that are the focus of this paper, we will summarize briefly the kinds of pro-natalist policies some of these countries have been introducing. Japan Japan4 has gradually been cranking up its pro-natalist policies as the level of concern with very low fertility rises. Japanese policy has followed two main approaches: direct subsidies for child-bearing and child-raising; and changing the institutional framework to facilitate marriage and child-raising. As in many other countries, child allowances (first introduced in 1972) were a family policy measure to assist low-income families, rather than a pro-natalist measure. But after 1990, pro-natalist concerns led to large increases in the allowances, though an eligibility criterion remains. In 1991, unpaid leave for childcare was introduced, though part-time workers were excluded. The “Angel Plan,” introduced in 1994, called for major expansion of childcare centres, with eligibility criteria varying by locality. Later, part payment during childcare leave was introduced. In 1999 the “New Angel Plan” called for further expansion of the heavily subsidized day-care centres, after-school programs and family support centres. In 2001,


Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries 9 the proportion of salary received by an employee on childcare leave was raised from 25 percent to 40 percent, and this was raised to 50 percent in late 2007. It seems that many employees, especially women, were not taking childcare leave because of social disapproval from fellow workers. Thus the government introduced measures aimed at creating an atmosphere within firms that would encourage parents to take the childcare leave to which they were entitled. Complying firms could use a logo saying “we support child-bearing among our employees”. Finally, in 2005, the government extended the right to childcare leave to part-time workers, under certain circumstances. Workers on short-term (for example, three-month or six-month) contracts whose contracts were not renewed were not eligible for such leave, however. The gradual gearing up of pro-natalist policies in Japan is clear, but it is noteworthy that large tax deductions for children are not yet entertained. Moreover, the typically very small contribution of husbands to housework and child-rearing tasks (see Tsuya et al., 2005) means that the burden borne by the working wife remains very high. Without change in broader gender relations in Japan, the task of raising fertility appears formidable. South Korea5 In 1996, the South Korean government adopted new population-policy goals, in the face of continuing declines in fertility (the TFR had been around 1.6 or 1.7 for a decade). However, these goals were hardly pro-natalist, but rather emphasized maintaining the level of fertility, better reproductive health, redressing the imbalance in sex ratios at birth and reducing the incidence of induced abortion, tackling the sex-related problems of youth and adolescence, and empowering women by expanding employment opportunities and welfare services for them (Cho and Lee, 2000: 151–161). A decade later, with fertility dipping even lower, in 2006 the Korean government was developing policies (“Vision 2020”) in response to low fertility and an aging society. It is attempting to create a favorable environment for childbirth and child-rearing by transferring some of the burden of child-raising from family to society. More specifically, subsidies for the costs of child-rearing and education, currently available for low-income groups, are to be available for the middle class as well. Day-care for children up to age 4 would be subsidized according to the family’s income level. After-school programs would be expanded, particularly for lower-grade primary school children, as an alternative to expensive private tutoring institutions. Taxes would also be lowered for households with young dependent children or large families, and the tax system altered to reduce the costs of health insurance for such families. The introduction of a child-allowance system, which Korea as yet does not have, is being seriously considered. Childcare facilities are to be expanded in number and quality, with the government playing a central role. This is part of an effort to create a family-friendly and gender-equal social culture, making work and family more compatible. Companies providing maternity leave will be supported. Women workers at small

10 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan to mid-sized firms who take maternity leave can receive up to three months of employment insurance protection. Starting in 2008, male partners will automatically receive three days off to help after childbirth. Childcare leave that hitherto applied only to parents of children under the age of one will now be extended to children up to three years of age.


Singapore6 Tracing the history of anti-natalist policy in Singapore is complicated by the fact that for a period of time, beginning in 1984, Singapore adopted policies that were seemingly unique in Asia. These policies were selectively pro-natalist for the well-educated but anti-natalist for the poorly educated. They were adopted in the interests of improving the genetic quality of the population, but not directed at a general increase in fertility rates. Not very long after that, in 1987 however, Singapore reversed its fertility objectives. Since then, it has experimented with a wide range of measures designed to raise fertility. The general trend has been towards a strengthening of these measures over time, and especially since the further downward trend in fertility since 1996.7 The first task was to loosen or abandon the old anti-natalist policies, and this was gradually done (Saw, 2005: Chapter 11). A number of limited pro-natalist measures were also introduced in 1987. For example, couples having a third child were given priority in getting access to a larger HDB apartment through sale of their smaller apartment, and tax rebates were granted for third or fourth children. Subsequently, the involvement of the government in encouraging marriage was widened from a concern with ensuring that well-educated women married (through the Social Development Unit) to a broader program targeting also the non-tertiary educated. Further pro-natalist policies were announced in 2000, with the introduction of the baby bonus scheme for second and third children. The scheme consists of a two-tier payment given annually by the government for a period of six years after the birth of the child. The first tier is an outright cash gift (paid in five instalments over five years), totalling S$3,000 for the second child and S$5,000 for the third child, while in the second tier both parents and government contribute to a co-savings account. The scheme has been structured so that the funds must be used solely for the benefit of the children. Other pro-natalist provisions announced in 2000 included limited arrangments for paid leave in the public sector to marry and to attend to sick children, flexible working hours, and childcare subsidy for enrolment in childcare centres. In 2004, it was decided that these measures had been insufficient, and a raft of new schemes were introduced, including a Medisave maternity package and extra paid maternity leave (extending paid maternity leave from the 8 weeks in 2001 to 12 weeks). In addition there were: further modification of the provisions for getting an HDB apartment to encourage marriage; extensions to the baby bonus from the second and third children to include the first and fourth child; an increase in the subsidy paid by the government for enrolment of an infant


Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries 11 in childcare; a more liberal parenthood tax rebate; and a streamlined working mother’s child-relief scheme. Further measures announced in 2004 included: provision of the statutory two-day paid childcare leave for a parent of a child under 7 years of age; a lower maid levy for parents with children under 12 years of age; tax relief for working mothers where the grandparent serves as care-giver; introduction of a five-day working week in the civil service (though the week’s total working hours remain the same); equal medical benefits for male and female civil servants; and incentives for firms to seek better “work-life harmony” for their employees. Taiwan As noted earlier, the new population policy announced in Taiwan in 1992, though advocating the maintenance of reproduction at the replacement level, and essentially ending the family planning program, included no specific pro-natalist measures. It seems that even up to the present no financial incentives have been provided for childbearing, except for limited tax deductions and, in 2007, free kindergarten schooling for low income families. Policies have included the exhortation for more single Taiwanese to marry, but the rapid rise in marriages between Taiwanese men and foreign women (Tsay, 2004) appears to have caught the government by surprise. Assessment of policies in these East Asian countries How do the pro-natalist policies in Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan compare with those in European countries? A systematic assessment of this would require much more time and resources than we are able to apply to it, but instead we will try to put forward a few generalizations. First, these Asian countries follow a familialist approach that places much higher expectations on the family to provide the kinds of support needed for children and the elderly than is the case in the European countries, with the possible exception of the Mediterranean countries. Second, the amount of resources put into the first two kinds of family support programs listed above (financial incentives, and support for parents to combine work and family) is far less in these Asian countries than in the Scandinavian countries or indeed in European countries in general, again with the possible exception of the Mediterranean countries. Third, the range of policies in the ultra-low fertility Asian countries (except Taiwan) has widened considerably in recent years and the financial resources provided for these policies are growing rapidly. Fourth, there is a long way to go in bringing about broad social change supportive of children and parenting in these countries. Thus, for example, in Japan and Korea there is evidence of only a glacially slow change in the amount of time husbands put into household tasks and child-rearing in families where both spouses are working (Tsuya and Bumpass (eds), 2004; Tsuya et al., 2005). The policies recently introduced by South Korea appear to illustrate the “too little, too late” problem – Korean fertility is probably now the lowest in the world

12 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan among countries with populations over 30 million, yet the range of policies introduced in 2006 appears modest compared with that in the European lowfertility countries.


What has been the effect of pro-natalist programs on fertility? There is a substantial literature on the effect of family planning programs on fertility (see, for example, Ross and Forrest, 1978; United Nations, 1979; Mauldin, 1983; Phillips and Ross (eds), 1992) and an almost equally substantial literature on the effect on fertility of pro-natalist measures adopted by the low-fertility countries (summarized in Neyer, 2003: 78–81; see also Gauthier and Hatzius, 1997). In both cases, the problem for measurement is the uncertainty about the “counter-factual”: what would have happened to fertility in the absence of the programs? There are, of course, many ways to deal with this problem, none of them yielding absolutely trustworthy conclusions, hence the continuing spate of writings on the subject. The most sophisticated studies on the anti-natalist effects of family planning programs have dealt with population-based methods measuring the net program effects upon fertility for the population as a whole. These can be grouped as areal regression techniques, multilevel regression and experimental design (for details, see Ross and Lloyd, 1992: 36–43; Phillips et al., 1988). In this book we are more interested in assessing the impact of pro-natalist programs on fertility. But before attempting such an exercise, it is necessary to have some idea of the underlying causes of the decline in fertility to very low levels in these East Asian countries. Only when the causes are reasonably well understood is it likely to be possible to assess the impact of policy. Background factors influencing the decline to ultra-low fertility in East Asia The context in which delayed marriage and sharp fertility declines have occurred in East Asia has been one in which women’s educational levels have been rising and their workforce participation generally increasing. Concurrent with the rapid rise in numbers of women with secondary and tertiary education, there has been a very sharp rise in the proportion of females working. Trends in labor-force participation rates (LFPRs) for women aged 25–39 in Japan, Singapore and South Korea are shown in Table 1.3. In both Japan and Singapore, there was a sharp increase from 1975 onwards for all three age groups. In South Korea, by contrast, it was only after 1985 that female participation rates rose sharply, and even then to levels well below those in Japan or Singapore. The sharp rise in LFPRs in Japan and Singapore coincided with sharp increases in delayed marriage (Jones, 2007). The delayed increase in LFPRs in South Korea was consistent with the much later onset of delayed marriage for females in that country. Causation, of course, remains difficult to determine, because of the “chicken and egg” issue: did women remain single longer because they were



Table 1.3 Labor-force participation rates for females in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, certain age groups, 1960–2000

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2004

Japan

Singapore

South Korea

25–29 30–34 35–39

25–29 30–34 35–39

25–29

30–34

35–39

46 43 49 54 61 66 70 74

31 47 59 67 76 79 84** 86

31.7 35.1 34.1 35.9 42.8 47.8 55.9 63.9

36.3 40.7 46.1 43.2 49.6 47.5 48.5 50.4

43.1 49.3+ 55.5 55.8 58.0 59.2 59.1 58.9

48 44 48 51 52 54 57 61

46 43 49 54 61 66 70 74

23 32 44 49 63 64 74** 77

19 29 37 45 55 58 63** 68

Source: Jones, 2007: Table 5. ** 2001.

in the workforce, or were they in the workforce because they were still single? In Japan, which has the best data for examining these issues, the fact that the labor-force participation rate (LFPR) increased faster after 1975 for women aged 25–29 than for women in other age groups indicates that some reverse causality was occurring at age 25–29 (Retherford et al., 2001: 77). There was a major increase in the proportion single in this age group, and because the LFPR was much higher for single women, this drove up the LFPR independently of other factors that were also driving up this rate. But the LFPR for single women was also rising over this period (from 81 percent in 1972 to 92 percent in 1999). Retherford et al. (2001: 82) claim that there is evidence of a substantial increase in the opportunity cost for women of quitting their job to marry and have children, which would have driven up the age at marriage, though this pressure may be decreasing because a declining proportion of women are quitting the labor force after marriage and first birth, especially in the period between 1995 and 1998. In theory, young people may be avoiding marriage for reasons that differ from those that influence married couples to avoid having children. For example, marriage itself could be seen by young women intent on pursuing a career as a distraction from their goal, or they may be delaying it until, inadvertently, they find that they are faced by a lack of suitable partners (the “good man is hard to find” syndrome). In reality, however, marriage is a package, as it is not simply about the relationship between two people, but tightly linked with child-bearing, childrearing, and other family obligations. Thus the delay in marriage in the region is undoubtedly linked to a considerable – though not easily measurable – extent with the same kinds of concerns that are influencing married couples to delay childbearing or to have only one or two children. To marry without the intention to have children is still considered aberrant behavior throughout the region. There is no doubt that after marrying young couples are subjected to considerable pressure to have a baby, from family and to a lesser extent from friends. The easiest way to


14 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan avoid this is to remain single. Although single people are also pressured to marry, this may be less than that exerted on married couples to produce their first child. The arguments against having children, especially for upwardly mobile women throughout the region, appear compelling. Not only are the opportunity costs of having children alarmingly high, but the actual financial costs of raising and educating children are also very substantial. These financial costs have been estimated at US$253,000 for an average family in Korea, based on a survey conducted by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs,8 and about the same level for Singapore. When opportunity costs are added in as well, it has been estimated that for female university graduates in Japan, the costs of raising and educating a child could well exceed 1 million US dollars. (For the data on which this estimate is based, see Retherford and Ogawa, 2005: 15–16.) The role of women in these South-East and East Asian societies may provide additional reasons to avoid bearing children. Patriarchal attitudes among employers and in government, resulting in poor workplace provision for the needs of working mothers (including lack of flexible working hours, childcare leave and provision of crèches), and reluctance of husbands to take much of the housework and childrearing tasks from working wives, adds considerable stress to the lives of women with children. The extreme pressure in countries such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore to raise high-quality children, and the unequal role given to mothers in achieving this goal, is another strong deterrent to beginning the process of family building (see, for example, Hirao, 2004). There are, then, clearly substantial obstacles to raising fertility rates in the ultra-low fertility countries. But this is not a reason to despair about the possible efficacy of policy. Not only in these East Asian countries but also in the lowfertility countries of Europe, women report family size ideals that are very close to the levels needed for population replacement (Quah, 2003: 71–73; Prachuabmoh and Mithranon, 2003: 39–40). There is an argument that expressed fertility desires do not prove very much about “real” fertility desires in low-fertility situations. In the European countries with well-below-replacement fertility, expressed desired fertility is much above the actual levels of fertility and rarely falls below two, nor does it differ much by cohort or social group (Van de Kaa, 2001; Bachrach, 2001). Indeed, international evidence indicates that there tends to be a crossover in actual and expressed desired family size when actual family size falls to levels a little above replacement level. Above this level, desired fertility tends to be below actual, but below this level the reverse holds (Bongaarts, 2001: 263–266). As Livi Bacci (2001: 284) notes, “the suspicion is that stated preferences are heavily influenced by stereotypes and particularly by the model of the two-child family (a boy and a girl). This stereotype is pervasive and many surveyed individuals are ‘prisoners’ of it”. It would be inappropriate, however, to push such an argument to the extreme of concluding that expressed preferences give no cause for optimism about the possible efficacy of pro-natalist policy. As McDonald (2006: 485) argues, “in expressing higher ‘ideal preferences’ on average, women are effectively commenting upon the nature of the social-institutional setting in which they

Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries 15 consider having children”. The interest of society is in assisting them to realize their stated desires, in two key ways:

•• by designing policies that make it more desirable for individual women to have children within the given social-institutional setting;

•• by altering aspects of the social-institutional setting that influence their


fertility decisions.

Assessment of the impact of pro-natalist programs on fertility The preceding paragraphs summarize the East Asian setting in which pro-natalist policies are being practiced. Western countries, especially in Europe, have a longer history of pro-natalism, and the impact of pro-natalist programs on fertility in this setting has been discussed by various authors (for example, McDonald, 2002, 2006; Castles, 2003; Grant et al., 2004; Adkins, 2003; Neyer, 2003). Assessment of the impact of these policies on fertility has often been pessimistic, but, by and large, the references cited support the argument that direct child-support payments have a positive impact on fertility, as does greater childcare availability, with the evidence on the effect of family-friendly workplaces more mixed. McDonald (2002: 442) argues that the impact of individual pro-natalist measures can rarely be treated in isolation, because the effect of any policy will depend on the broader setting: A range of brilliant gender equity policies will be ineffective if unemployment rates are high for young people of childbearing age. Work and family policies can only work if there is work. Likewise, these same gender equity policies would be put under strain if the direct financial costs of children were very high or if the general tenor of the social setting was child-unfriendly. As Sleebos (2003: 5) argues, “what is required is coherent application of a range of well-designed interventions, applied consistently over time”. The general consensus about pro-natalist policies in East Asian countries seems to be that they have failed, because there is no evidence that fertility has risen as a result of their introduction. A reasonable response to this is that fertility may have fallen even further if these policies had not been introduced. Another is that the policies have not gone as far as they might, and in many cases, strengthening of policies has occurred only recently, so it is therefore premature to judge their apparent lack of success as proof that pro-natalist policies will always fail. But it is also true that the methodology of assessing the impact of pro-natalist policies on fertility is complex, and that for all countries, the likely efficacy of pro-natalist policies is difficult to predict. For example, as noted by Ogawa, Retherford and Matsukura (Chapter 3, this volume), programs making it easier to combine work and child-rearing can have both fertility reducing and fertility increasing effects. On average, for women who are already in the paid workforce, the effects of such policies should clearly be to raise their fertility. However, again

16 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan on average, by pulling some housewives into the labor force, this is likely to lower their fertility, since working women have lower fertility than housewives:


Which of these two effects predominates depends partly on: • the magnitude of pre-existing fertility differences between workers and housewives • how much the fertility of working women rises as a result of the government’s policies and programs, • the magnitude of the probability that a housewife will be pulled into the labor force as a result of the government’s policies and programs, • the relative numbers of workers and housewives to begin with. If almost all women are already working, the overall effect will be to raise the TFR. If almost all women are housewives, the overall effect will be to lower the TFR. (Ogawa, Retherford, and Matsukura, Chapter 3, this volume: p. 67).

Some implications The World Population Plan of Action, 1974, Article 14(f) stated: All couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information and means to do so; the responsibility of couples and individuals in the exercise of this right takes into account the needs of their living and future children, and their responsibilities toward the community. This statement is careful in balancing rights and responsibilities. But there is frequently a tension between “individual good” and “common good” when it comes to matters of optimal family size. Many governments have taken the position that couples, acting on their individual right, are collectively causing population to develop in ways that have negative consequences for the community and nation, and that governments therefore have the responsibility to nudge population trends in ways that are collectively desirable.9 This was the argument for population control policies in high-fertility countries, and it is the argument for pro-natalist policies in low-fertility countries. In most lowfertility countries, under present arrangements, the fact is that the market will provide lower benefits to those with children than to those without children, and this affects fertility decision-making. “The collapse of birth rates in most industrialized countries is telling evidence of the failure of the market approach to allow social reproduction to proceed” (McDonald, 2002: 432). Governments, then, must act to redress the situation, but the corporate sector needs to be supportive, given the likely impact of many pro-natalist policies on its “bottom line”. The efforts to reduce fertility in high-fertility countries undoubtedly paid off in terms of slowing population growth, providing a context more favorable to poverty alleviation and providing a greater chance that humankind can reach a population equilibrium without putting intolerable strain on the earth’s resources.


Very low fertility in Pacific Asian countries 17 It is striking, though, that governments have proven to be far from omniscient in determining appropriate population policies. As we have seen, they have frequently been very slow to react to changing circumstances, for example, in failing to release the policy-imposed brakes on population growth early enough after their fertility level has fallen below replacement level. This raises the following issue: at the present time, which countries should be following a policy that is neither anti-natalist nor pro-natalist? We would argue that countries in which total fertility rates have fallen below about 2.7 do not need to follow specifically anti-natalist policies any longer, and those whose fertility remains above about 1.8 do not need to follow specifically pro-natalist policies. This is because international evidence suggests that once TFR declines to 2.7 or so, the decline tends to continue, and that countries where TFR is as high as 1.8 or so seem to have their family and other policies about right in maintaining their long-term population (and could make up any deficit through migration). For countries in this key range of one child in the TFR – from about 1.8 to about 2.7 – attention would be better directed at:

•• good-quality reproductive health services directed at the welfare of mothers •• ••

(and fathers) and children, one element of which would be the encouragement of delay in child-bearing and better spacing; development of sound family policies directed towards the welfare of children; provision of appropriate options to combine work and child-rearing.

In terms of the effects of these policies on fertility, planners can afford to “let the chips fall where they may,” of course keeping a watching brief on where they do indeed fall. Available evidence suggests that by concentrating on the quality and ready availability of reproductive health services and on family policy providing financial and other support for child-raising and an appropriate “work-life balance” the chips will fall appropriately in the sense of keeping fertility from dropping too low. Finally, there is need for introspection about many issues of social and family policy in the new ultra-low fertility situation. For example, the earlier concern about the treatment of women’s reproductive rights in population-control programs has surfaced again recently in relation to pro-natalist policy. Women must never be viewed as mere pawns in the game of either lowering or raising birth rates. In a speech to local members of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in January 2007, the Japanese Minister of Health, Hakuo Yanagisawa, said, “Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head”. Although after the subsequent furore, Mr Yanagisawa apologized, critics claimed that his words revealed a more widespread attitude among male government officials. Another issue is that where those who give birth to and raise children are seen to be “national heroes” or rather “national heroines,” the kudos given to such parents seems to imply an inevitable downplaying of the recognition given to those who do not bear and raise babies – the single, the childless couples, the gay couples.


18 Gavin Jones, Paulin Tay Straughan, and Angelique Chan This seems particularly unfortunate in cases where failure to produce children is by circumstance rather than choice – infertile couples; those who would like to have children but who have not found a suitable partner; those who choose to remain single to care for aging parents. But even in the case of those who choose not to have children for what some would judge to be “selfish” reasons, the need for a varied, vibrant and inclusive society would seem to dictate that people’s contributions to society be judged on a much broader set of criteria than whether they produce and raise children to ensure society’s replacement by the next generation. This is not to argue that income redistribution from those who do not produce children to those who do is inappropriate. Indeed, given the enormous direct financial and indirect opportunity costs – to well-educated women in particular – of having babies, much more substantial monetary transfers than are presently contemplated by countries of East Asia would appear to be necessary.

Notes 1 For example, the poor, semi-arid country of Niger in West Africa faces a trebling (or more) of population with very bleak prospects for development (Cleland et al., 2006: 1812). 2 There was a long-running debate over how women’s rights fared under population control policies. The debate tended to pit feminists against family planners (see Hartmann, 1987; Dixon-Mueller, 1993; Sen, 1994). There were awkward elements to the debate on both sides. Feminists had to deal with the evidence of the great need for family planning information and methods by women seeking to assert control over their fertility, and the potential contribution of appropriately conducted family planning programs to meeting this need. The family planners had to confront the evidence that in many countries the goal of reducing fertility was given priority over the need to provide women with appropriate choices. The argument that women were being treated simply as objects producing excess babies was irrefutable when applied to fertility control programs in China and India at particular times. The taking up of positions – the need for population control on one hand and the need to empower women to take control of their own lives on the other – tended to leave little common ground between family planning advocates and those arguing for reproductive rights, although, arguably, there was a large area of common ground to be occupied. 3 Actually, important modification in Singapore’s population policy had been made in 1983, when Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s National Day speech discussed the differences in fertility levels according to the education of the mother. The following year, the first pro-natalist programs were launched, but these were only directed to the issue of fertility differentials between well-educated and less-educated women, not at raising the overall level of fertility. 4 For more detail, see the chapter by Ogawa, Retherford and Matsukura in this book. 5 The following paragraphs draw heavily on Eun, 2007. 6 The following paragraphs draw heavily on Saw, 2005, Chapters 11–13. 7 This downward trend was interrupted by a rise in a single year – 2000 – which was a Dragon Year (Saw, 2005: 207–210). This was only a blip in the downward trend. 8 This survey covered 11,816 children across Korea (Straits Times, 28/10/2007). 9 As Demeny (1986: 476) has argued, “When socially advantageous modification of demographic behavior is beyond the capacity of private markets to provide, it assumes the character of a public good that must be acquired, if at all, through the political marketplace”.



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2

Explanations of low fertility in East Asia A comparative perspective


Peter McDonald

Based mainly on experience and research in Western European and Englishspeaking countries, I have argued that low fertility in advanced societies today has been an unintended outcome of two major waves of social and economic change, social liberalism and economic restructuring (McDonald 2006a). Both these waves have enhanced individual aspirations in relation to the quality of personal and economic lives. However, in differing cultural and welfare environments, both have brought pressure to bear upon the capacity to form and maintain families. Social liberalism and economic restructuring have given rise to two important changes for individuals: the provision of gender equity through an opening up of opportunities for women beyond the household, and growing levels of risk aversion among young people of both sexes in an increasingly competitive labor market. These changes influence fertility in the following ways.

Gender equity and fertility Most advanced societies have a recent history of differentiated family roles for men and women where men specialized in wage-earning while women specialized in home-making and caring for relatives, especially children. Rigidly differentiated roles for men and women were questioned as part of the reaction in the 1960s and 1970s to socially prescribed roles for men and women and the movement toward greater freedoms for the individual. As a result, education levels for women increased dramatically, and opportunities in paid employment were opened to women to the extent that, in the institutions of education and market employment, considerable gender equity was afforded to women as individuals. The movement to gender equity has been focused, however, upon individual-oriented social institutions. In contrast, family related institutions, especially the family itself, have continued to be characterized by gender inequity. By the time women begin to consider family formation, they have experienced considerable freedom and gender equality as individuals, but they are keenly aware that these gains will be distinctly compromised once they have a baby (McDonald 2000a, 2000b). This is especially the case in labor markets where little or no provision is made for the combination of work and family. There is a considerable economic dimension to


24 Peter McDonald the gender argument, the mechanism being the lifetime earnings lost to women through having children. In these circumstances, women exercise careful control over their own fertility, delay their family formation, and have fewer children to such an extent that fertility falls to very low levels. In some settings where child-bearing is a strongly expected, rapid consequence of marriage – in East Asia, for example – women may remain unmarried. The central problem is that family formation involves greater risks for women than for men. Accordingly, women are wary about embarking upon marriage and child-bearing if they do not feel confident about their ability to combine family with the other opportunities that have opened up for them, especially through paid employment.

Economic restructuring, risk aversion and fertility Globalization and sharply rising education levels have created high economic aspirations among young people. At the same time, the competitive nature of labor-market deregulation has led to a wider variation in their earnings and career stability and progression. Engagement in the deregulated labor market is now seen as involving greatly increased risk. Under these conditions, young people tend to become risk-averse, that is, they follow pathways that have lower risk. Any recent economic shock, such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis, adds both to the sense of risk among young workers and to the determination of employers to protect their enterprises through reduced employment security of workers. While, at an individual level, early labor-market success can promote earlier family formation, the societal balance is toward later achievement of economic security, in a context where security is defined within an environment of greatly enhanced economic aspirations. Investment in one’s human capital (education and labor-market experience) is seen as the essential hedge against these risks, the optimal path of risk aversion. This investment involves considerable commitment to self and to one’s employer, especially through long work hours, in opposition to a commitment to more altruistic endeavors such as service to family members and family formation. As a consequence, family formation is put on hold while human capital is accumulated. While family formation remains the goal of most people, within the context of the opportunities and risks of the economic restructuring it can be delayed to an extent that achieved fertility falls short of individual preferences.

Cross-country variations in fertility While all advanced countries have been subject in varying degrees to these two major waves of social and economic change, the outcomes in terms of fertility rates have been different. One group of countries has very low fertility rates (defined as being under 1.5 births per woman) while another group has fertility rates that are moderate (defined as being above 1.5 births per woman). These groups of countries are shown in Table 2.1. The table displays an interesting cultural divide.

Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 25


Table 2.1 Total Fertility Rates, 2005 Group 1 Countries

TFR

Group 2 Countries/Regions

TFR

United States (2004) Iceland New Zealand France Ireland Norway Australia Finland Denmark United Kingdom Sweden Netherlands Belgium Luxembourg Canada (2004)

2.05 2.05 2.00 1.94 1.88 1.84 1.82 1.80 1.80 1.80 1.77 1.73 1.72 1.70 1.53

Switzerland Austria Portugal Malta Germany Italy Spain Greece Japan Singapore Taiwan Republic of Korea Hong Kong SAR

1.42 1.41 1.40 1.37 1.34 1.34 1.34 1.28 1.26 1.24 1.12 1.08 0.97

Source: Eurostat and national statistical offices.

The Group 1 countries consist of all of the English-speaking countries, all Frenchand Dutch-speaking Western European countries and all of the Nordic countries. The Group 2 countries consist of all of the Southern European countries, all of the German-speaking Western European countries and all of the Asian countries/ regions with advanced economies. Indeed, with the exception of Canada, there is a fairly substantial gap (around 0.3 births per woman) between the fertility rates of the two groups. Furthermore, the fertility rates of the Group 1 countries have never fallen below 1.5 births per woman (except for Denmark and Canada dipping slightly below a fertility rate of 1.5 for very brief periods). And, once having fallen below a fertility rate of 1.5 births per woman, none of the Group 2 countries have yet risen again above the 1.5 level. This last observation has led some demographers to argue that there may be “a low-fertility trap”. Their hypothesis is that sustained very low fertility may lead to demographic, social and economic changes that institutionalize very low fertility (Lutz et al. 2006). While the lowfertility trap is based upon observations that I have made, my own view is more optimistic, that very low fertility rates are reversible through urgent, concerted policy effort.

The effects of very low fertility While seemingly small, I have argued that the gap of 0.3–0.4 births per woman between the Group 1 and Group 2 countries is the difference between future demographic sustainability and future demographic crisis (McDonald 2006b). At the macro level, sustained low fertility rates have a devastating impact on future labor supply at the same time as the number of older people is increasing. If recent demographic trends were to continue, by 2040, the labor force in Japan would


26 Peter McDonald fall by 20 million workers and in both Italy and Germany by 11 million workers (McDonald and Kippen 2001). These losses are entirely losses of younger workers and in an era of rapidly changing technology, economies that are blasé about their future supply of young technologically skilled workers are taking a considerable risk (McDonald and Temple 2006, Skirbekk 2003). Using several economic indicators, Ogawa et al. (2005) demonstrate that, in Japan, the demographic bonus conferred by the earlier decline in fertility was transformed to a “demographic onus” from 2000 onwards due to the impacts on the age structure of sustained low fertility. In Europe as well, this message is receiving more prominence as very low fertility rates persist for longer periods and as aging societies face the certain knowledge that their social insurance systems are not viable in a future with a much older population and a sharply reduced labor supply (Commission of the European Communities 2005). In European countries, there is evidence also that very low fertility, on average, is counter to the preferences of individuals experiencing it (van Peer 2002, d’Addio and d’Ercole 2005). While individual-level economic analysis attributes meaning only to revealed preferences, actual fertility behavior (a revealed preference) is achieved within a given social-institutional setting. In expressing higher “ideal preferences” on average, women are effectively commenting upon the nature of the social-institutional setting in which they consider having children. They are saying that, in a different institutional setting, they believe they would have had more children. Benefits accrue both to the individuals concerned and to the society as a whole if fertility ideals can come closer to being fulfilled. There are severe questions about the nature of social organization if citizens fail to have the number of children they would prefer to have when that number is as low as one, two, or three children. The argument is a subtle one because the societies under discussion do not remove the right to have children as some societies remove other personal freedoms. Rather, the argument is that ideals go unrealized because of countervailing forces ensuing from the nature of modern society. Low fertility is an unintended rather than a deliberate outcome of changing social and economic institutions. The argument here is that very low fertility is explained not by individual behavior but by institutional constraints upon individual behavior.

The cultural divide between Group 1 and Group 2 countries The sharp cultural divide shown in Table 1 is very unlikely to be the outcome of mere chance and, as such, demands explanation. In broad terms, the Group 2 countries share a strong tradition in which family and state are separate entities and families are expected to support their own members without intervention from the state. Accordingly, these states have been slow to implement family assistance measures or to “intervene” in family life. With some variation, the opposite is the case in the Group 1 countries; in general, they are notable for the family-friendly institutional arrangements that their governments and employers have implemented in the past 20 years and for relatively higher


Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 27 levels of gender equity within the family.1, 2 The responsibility for family caring and maintenance (beyond income) in Group 2 countries falls almost exclusively upon women, that is, the male-breadwinner model of the family remains largely intact. Because women are expected to provide caring and maintenance work, in Group 2 countries, the service and public sectors are generally smaller than in Group 1 countries (Bettio and Villa 1998). In Group 1 countries, these are the sectors that are more likely to employ women and to have family friendly work environments. It is no surprise then that both fertility and labor-force participation rates for women are lower in Group 2 countries. Ironically, Group 2 countries see themselves as having strong traditional “family values”. This image of themselves makes change from the traditional family organization politically more difficult. The cultural divide indicates that differences between countries with very low fertility and those with moderately low fertility are due to institutional factors rather than to individual-level factors. Very low fertility in Group 2 countries is not the result of young people in Group 2 countries being more selfish or materialistic than young people in Group 1 countries. They simply do not receive the level of family support from governments and employers that young people in Group 1 countries receive. Individual preferences are formed in the shadow of the social and economic institutions of the society that, in turn, are within the realm of political choice. Governments and employers have played a leading role in the social and economic changes that have brought pressure to bear on all forms of altruistic behavior but, most especially, upon family life. Because of this, it is incumbent upon governments and employers to restore the balance through family support programs.

Very low fertility in the advanced economies of Asia As shown in Table 2.1, the fertility rates in all of the advanced economies of Asia are very low. Indeed, fertility is lower in all of these Asian societies than it is in the other Group 2 countries. Many countries in East and Central Europe also have fertility rates under 1.3 but there are special circumstances applying in these countries related to the massive restructuring of their economies. Why do advanced Asian societies have the lowest fertility rates in the world? The explanations of very low fertility that I have provided above are based largely on research in European contexts and not so much in Asian contexts. Thus there is some possibility that explanations of very low fertility in advanced Asian contexts may be different. If the explanations that I have provided are applicable to Asian advanced societies then we would expect that:

•• The incoherence between gender equity in individually oriented institutions and family oriented institutions would be very large in these societies.

•• There would be a strong sense of economic risk and economic pressure upon young people in these societies.

•• There would be a relative absence of support from governments and employers for the family needs of young people.

28 Peter McDonald If there are other explanations specific to advanced Asian economies, what might they be? There are three main alternatives:


1

2

3

Much attention has been given to delayed marriage and non-marriage in the East and Southeast Asian context (Jones 2005). Individual country studies for Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong have attributed very low fertility mainly to delay of marriage or non-marriage (Takahashi 2004; Atoh et al. 2004; Choe et al. 2004; Yip et al. 2006). These studies are based upon decompositions of the change in total fertility over time in one country into changes in proportions married and changes in marital fertility. These studies tend to show that the effect of changes in marriage is dominant, although Koh’s study of Singapore shows an equal effect of the two components. The conclusion often drawn from this type of analysis is that the correct policy direction is to get people married rather than to promote fertility within marriage. In Japan, Yamada (1996) has referred to those delaying marriage as “parasite singles” (Yamada 1996; Takahashi and Voss 2000). I shall refer to this as the marriage explanation. There has been some emphasis in studies in Asia on high direct costs of children (especially the costs of their future education) as explanations of low fertility. The hypothesis here is that young people, themselves having experienced acute competition in the education and labor markets, consider that the only way that they can have their own children achieve success is to have fewer of them. If they have few children, they figure that they are more likely to be able to meet the very steep education costs (“cram” schools, foreign degrees, etc.) that will apply to their children across their future lifetimes. I shall refer to this as the direct-cost explanation. There is an argument that most people in advanced Asian economies live in large, densely populated cities with high housing costs and housing and urban environments that are unfriendly to children. I shall refer to this as the housing explanation.

Individual preferences Before discussing the potential explanations of very low fertility in East Asia, it is worth pointing out that young people in advanced Asian countries also express fertility ideals that are above replacement-level fertility. For Japan, Suzuki (2006) reports that the average ideal number of children (for wives aged less than 50) has never fallen below 2.5 in the past 25 years and that the average number of children expected by the same women was around 2.1 in 2005. Furthermore, very few single Japanese women expressed a preference to remain single (under 8 percent). Suzuki concludes, consistently with the argument above, that “recent fertility decline should be explained not from demand itself but from obstacles to fulfilling the demand” (Suzuki 2006: 8). Choe et al. (2004) present data showing that the ideal number of children has not fallen below 2 in the Republic of Korea at any time in the past 20 years.


Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 29 However, they also consider “planned fertility,” the final number of children that women plan to have. This fell to 1.4 in 2000 and only 50 percent of women with one child planned to have another. Choe et al. (2004: 10) conclude: currently, the TFR and the planned number of children among married women are both well below the mean ideal number of children, suggesting that women would have more children if their socio-economic circumstances were also ideal”. In the case of Singapore, Yap (2003: 651) reports that the average number of children preferred by women in their 20s was 2.5 in 1997 and that “the desired family size among women in their twenties has remained fairly stable over the past two decades or so”. If these studies and their interpretations are correct, advanced Asian countries are not yet in the situation of the “low-fertility trap” where individual ideals fall to a level that corresponds with the number of children that people are actually having.

The marriage explanation Decomposition of the decline in fertility to changes in proportions married and changes in age-specific marital fertility rates is a peculiarly Asian approach. While often applied in Asia, this approach is rarely applied to investigations of fertility decline in European countries, although reference is made to delay of marriage as an explanatory factor in Italy (Dalla Zuanna et al. 1998). This probably stems from the fact that it has been assumed generally that cohabitation and births outside of marriage are negligible in advanced Asian countries whereas this is not the case in Europe.3 European analyses usually focus on cumulated fertility of cohorts by given ages or cumulated proportions by age having a first, second and third birth (Frejka and Sardon 2004; Lesthaeghe 2001). These European studies indicate that age at first birth has increased sharply in all countries and this leads to falling cumulated fertility at younger ages. The difference between the Group 1 and Group 2 European countries is that as women age through their thirties, cumulated fertility rises relative to a standard in the Group 1 countries but fails to rise or rises only slightly in the Group 2 countries. Lesthaeghe (2001) refers to this process as “recuperation,” meaning that women in Group 1 countries having had relatively low fertility in their younger ages “recuperate” much of the loss at older ages. Suzuki (2006) has presented data in this form for Japanese birth cohorts. The results show the increasing onset of a failure to recuperate for successive Japanese cohorts. In the context of the decomposition methodology, recuperation implies that marital fertility rates at older ages would rise as proportions married at younger ages fell. From the policy perspective, the important feature of very low fertility is not so much that marriage rates are low in the twenties but that marital fertility rates fail to rise (or even fall) in the thirties. While much attention is focused on low marriage rates in advanced Asian countries, Table 2.2 indicates that, by age group 30–34, most Asian women have married and that the proportions “partnered” in most European countries (both Group 1 and Group 2) are very similar to the proportions married in the Asian countries in the table.

30 Peter McDonald Table 2.2 Women aged 30–34, percentages never married and percentages never married and not cohabiting, selected countries Group 1 Country

Females Aged 30–34


% Never % Never Married Married and Not Cohabiting Ireland France Norway Finland Denmark Sweden United Kingdom Netherlands Belgium

39.1 37.3 43.0 40.5 38.4 51.1 34.5 33.6 27.0

30.3 19.4 20.9 20.9 17.6 — 21.9 16.9 18.9

Group 2 Country or Region

Females Aged 30–34

Portugal Switzerland Austria Germany Italy Spain Greece Japan Singapore Chinese South Korea Hong Kong

16.2 28.7 32.1 29.6 30.0 31.1 20.3 26.6 21.6

— 20.0 22.1 19.2 28.0 26.3 18.6 — —

10.7 26.5

— —

% Never % Never Married Married and Not Cohabiting

Sources: European countries: Eurostat; Asian countries: Jones 2005: Table 1.

While there is a strong argument that the commencement of child-bearing has been excessively delayed in contemporary advanced societies, if most women are married by their early thirties, there is still adequate time for them to have two children. In Group 1 countries, they do; in Group 2 countries, they don’t. To repeat the Choe et al. (2004) finding, only 50 percent of South Korean women with one child plan to have a second child. In Singapore, Koh (2006) shows that, rather than rising over time, age-specific marital fertility rates at ages 30 and over have continued to fall to 2005. Of all the countries shown in Table 2.2, South Korea has by far the lowest percentage of 30–34-year-old women that are not married yet and, aside from Hong Kong, it has the lowest fertility rate among the countries and regions shown in Table 2.1. In behavioral terms, low marital fertility among women in their thirties is the essential difference between Group 1 and Group 2 countries, not differences in their marriage/relationship patterns. Nevertheless, in policy terms, encouragement of child-bearing at somewhat younger ages than have become the norm is worthwhile in both Group 1 and Group 2 countries. A further important point to be made is that decisions about marriage and child-bearing tend to be concurrently determined in advanced Asian societies: a decision to marry is equivalent to a decision to have a child (Shirahase 2000). There is some recent evidence in Japan of a rising trend to delay the first birth within marriage which may change this picture, but it remains true for most Japanese women that marriage means pregnancy and withdrawal from the labor force. Thus, any observed reluctance to marry must be considered in this context.

Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 31


The direct-cost explanation Japan is the country where high direct costs of children, especially the costs of their education, are most often cited as a reason for low fertility. Suzuki (2006: 8) claims: “the rising cost of children including public and private educational costs is thought to be the main reason of the recent low fertility in Japan”. Suzuki points out that envisaged high direct costs is the most frequently mentioned reason that people give when asked why they plan to have fewer children than their ideal number, especially respondents aged less than 30 (see also Oyama 2001: reporting on a data collection in 1992). High direct costs are also considered to be part of the explanation of Japan’s fertility decline by Retherford and Ogawa (2006). They cite estimates of the direct costs of children that range from US$286,000 (not including the cost of “cram” schooling) to US$630,100 for a child that attends private schools through medical school. It seems a little far-fetched to suggest that potential Japanese parents make estimates of the costs of their children’s education across their lifetime, compare this with their own estimated earnings and the expected earnings of their children and then discount all these estimations back to the present. Few potential Japanese parents are skilled econometricians. It is much more likely that their attitudes stem from their own experiences with their own parents. The current generation of potential parents in Japan is a large generation who have struggled in a very competitive educational environment. They have witnessed their own parents sacrificing their living standard in the interests of higher educational achievements for their children, today’s potential parents. Thus, while the next generation of Japanese children will be smaller in number than their parents’ generation and while competition for educational places is already falling, today’s potential parents are influenced more by the past than by projections of the future. The argument that the assessment of the costs of children by potential Japanese parents is more subjective than objective is supported by the research of Oyama (2003a) on costs of children. He finds that using an objective measure, the Rothbarth model based on consumption of adult goods, the costs of children in Japan are low. However, using a subjective measure based on levels of satisfaction with income, the costs are high. In a subsequent paper, Oyama (2003b) concludes that factors associated with low fertility in Japan are low income of the husband and lack of housing support from the older generation. He concludes that these results are “probably caused by the recent higher cost of raising and educating children in Japan”. Again, this implies a subjective assessment of the costs of children. There is also an issue about the question: why do you plan to have fewer children than your ideal? The answer is contingent on the number that is considered ideal. Using the 2000 Korean data provided by Choe et al. (2004), an extremely low percentage of Koreans with two children planned to have a third (about 4 percent). It is easy to envisage that parents would consider the direct costs of three children to be too expensive. A high proportion of today’s potential parents would have come from families with three or more children and, again, their own experience as children may have an important bearing on their thinking. However, Korea’s


32 Peter McDonald fertility appears to be very low because a high proportion of those with one child do not plan to have a second, although fully 92 percent plan to have at least one child. Lifting the progression from the first to the second child in Korea from 0.5 to 0.7 would increase the fertility of a cohort by about 0.2; lifting the progression from the second to the third child from 4 percent to 10 percent would raise it by only 0.05 of a child. The progression from the first to the second child is the phenomenon that needs close investigation in the very low-fertility societies of Asia. In summary, there seems to be some evidence that young people in advanced East Asian countries may carry perceptions that the direct costs of children are high and therefore their number should be limited to as low as one child. Objectively, there does not seem to be strength to the argument that the direct costs of children are high. In policy terms, this suggests two directions: financial support attached to the first and the second child (as recently proposed in Russia) and education campaigns that carry the message that the costs of two children will be able to be managed by most families. Governments might also consider providing education guarantees subject to adequate performance of the child.

The housing explanation While we know that fertility rates are lowest in the large metropolitan cities of the advanced Asian countries/regions (Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore), little attention has been focused on the argument that city life and housing costs and conditions may not be conducive to child-rearing in these cities. Most residents of these cities live in high-rise apartment blocks. Generally, apartments are small. This is not an ideal environment for young children. There is also an impression that Group 1 countries are more likely to be “suburban” in nature and the suburbs are the home of the child. In policy terms, these massive cities and their housing form cannot be changed. In future developments, larger apartments would mean higher costs and perhaps further delay in the commencement of child-bearing. It may be possible that architects can consider ways in which existing high-rise apartment blocks and their immediate environment can be made more child-friendly. This is an area in which more research is required. However, in speaking to colleagues from advanced Asian economies (anecdotal evidence only), most consider that the form of housing is not a major determinant of low fertility because the forms available are consistent with standard expectations.

Alternative explanations: a summary The above discussion indicates that the key to interpreting very low fertility rates in advanced East Asian countries/regions lies in low marital fertility rates for women in their thirties, manifested primarily in a low progression from the first to the second child. While more research is needed, the marriage explanation, the direct-cost explanation and the housing explanation could not be said, on the available evidence, to provide satisfactory explanations for the low fertility in

Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 33 these settings. However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that some policy initiatives related to these explanations could have some effect:


•• •• •• •• ••

encouragement of an early age at first birth financial supports for the first and second child public awareness campaigns on the direct costs of children government educational guarantees refurbishment of apartment blocks to be more child-friendly.

As will be discussed below, there is more evidence that the standard “European” explanations of low fertility are also highly relevant in the advanced East Asian context. These can be described under three headings: work-family balance and gender equity, a sense of economic risk among young people, and a relative absence of family support provided by governments and employers stemming from the pervasive cultural value that families support their own. Work-family balance and gender equity Empirical work by Oyama (2001: 24) has shown that, for women in Japan, decisions about work and children are jointly determined and “the effects of wife’s work choice on number of children was mostly significant and negative”. As Atoh et al. (2004) argue, opportunities for young Japanese women in the labor market have mushroomed through higher levels of education and strong demand from employers. However, the capacity to combine work and family is limited and women are faced with stark choices regarding career or family. Tsuya et al. (2000) attribute low fertility rates in Japan and South Korea to lack of support for working women both outside and inside the household. They conclude that Korean women are faced with the starkest choice between work and family: “In Korea, married women seem to have only two options: work for long hours or not at all. This, in turn, demonstrates the limitations that the market and society impose on women’s ability to reconcile employment and family responsibilities” (Tsuya et al. 2000: 216). In like manner, Suzuki concludes: Thus, many Japanese women have the ability and opportunity to work but they have to give up their career on child-bearing. Such incompatibility is attributed to the remaining gender role attitude, low participation of the husband in housework, characteristics of the labour market, and underdevelopment of family policy. (Suzuki 2006: 11) For Korea, Chang observed: the very family-centeredness of South Koreans has been responsible for their internationally unparalleled fertility decline. … women’s high education has inevitably made their fertility, and sometimes even marriage, a serious


34 Peter McDonald personal sacrifice … Under these circumstances [increased participation of young women in the labor market], developed a growing awareness of the need for gender-equitable role and status arrangements both at home and in society. Furthermore, more and more women consider marriage merely one of the compromisable options in life and postpone it very late or even avoid it altogether. … more and more women [are] hesitant about marriage, in particular when they acquire a more than sufficient economic capacity for self-support mainly thanks to the expansion of service industries. Their high educational levels enable them to undertake whatever jobs newly created if arbitrary barriers of gender discrimination are checked. (Chang 2003: 596–603) Awareness of this explanation for low fertility is extending to more popular levels as indicated by the following quotation from the Korea Times: A new social contract guaranteeing that those who have children are not severely disadvantaged in the workplace is needed. The government is asked to review a wide range of policy options to effectively counter our disastrous situation. The cooperation of business is also important to increase the number of births in our country. Many business corporations here don’t provide parental leave for the birth of children of employees. People also need to know about the calamity that a low fertility rate can bring. (Korea Times, January 25, 2007) South Korea’s new policy direction, Vision2020, recognizes explicitly that “society should take on more responsibility as a whole for raising the next generation” (Eun 2006: 26). Gender inequity arguments have had the greatest force in South Korea followed by Japan. South Korea is active in addressing the situation through the creation of a Ministry of Gender Equality and discussion of a range of family support policies (Lee 2005; Eun 2006). The National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Tokyo, has been at the forefront of making these arguments in Japan especially through its former Director-General, Makoto Atoh. The argument seems to be less well developed in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, all countries in which there has been a central focus on non-marriage as the explanation of low fertility. However, Singapore has made some recent tentative steps in this direction including a five-day working week for public-sector workers, although the impact of this policy change has been reduced considerably by requiring workers to work longer on the five working days. The list of work and family policy initiatives is well known: paid parental leave; flexible work hours; availability of part-time work that is not inferior in level, hourly wage rate and promotion prospects; a five-day working week; and affordable, quality childcare. These policy directions remain severely under-developed in the developed countries of Asia. In all advanced Asian countries/regions, governments have failed to confront employers in order to achieve workplaces that are more cognizant of the needs of parents, especially mothers. Expected work hours remain in sharp

Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 35 conflict with family responsibilities. Women aged less than 30 in Singapore, for example, work an average of 52 hours per week.


Sense of economic risk among young people The impacts on fertility of rising job insecurity (or the sense of it) and the competitive labor market among young people are much under-researched in the Asian context. Generally, levels of direct unemployment have been low in the advanced economies of Asia but all have faced economic downturn in the recent past: the burst of the bubble economy in Japan and the 1997 Asian financial crisis in the other countries. All these countries have a strong reliance upon manufacturing and in the past decade have faced increasing competition, especially from China. The crisis and the increased competition have led to companies taking a leaner and meaner approach to job security. Ki-Soo Eun (2003) asserts strongly that the above economic arguments explain the fall in fertility in South Korea since the mid-1990s. He argues that labor-market deregulation has been accelerated since the Asian economic crisis in 1997: The core principle of the reconstruction of the labor market in accordance with the spirit of “new liberalism” was “flexibility”. According to this principle, workers should be … laid off whenever necessary. Rather than regular full-time workers, part-time or temporary workers have been preferred in various places by owners. … the barrier to the entrance into the labor market for younger people is still so high that they always have to undergo a kind of “war” to find a job in the labor market. On the other hand, the condition of labor or job status has become deteriorated and unstable. The concept of lifetime job has suddenly gone away in Korea since the economic crisis. (Eun 2003: 584) Eun has continued this analysis and, in 2006, published a detailed account of the ways in which the economic crisis of 1997 led to the changes in the Korean psyche that led to low fertility: The crisis fundamentally dismantled the belief in lifetime job security which had been maintained since widespread economic growth in the 1970s. With the introduction of the flexible labor market, much as happened in Japan, lifetime job security dissolved into a mirage. Ordinary people were forced to recognize that unemployment could happen to anyone, anytime or anywhere. No compensation or unemployment benefits were available and there were few opportunities to be re-hired in the formal sector after unemployment. The shock of the crisis weighed more heavily on the Korean psyche and society when compared to other Asian societies hard hit by the 1997 financial crisis because of the stark contrast between the undeniable expectations of economic prosperity and the subsequent economic privations. (Eun 2006: 11–12)


36 Peter McDonald Between 1997 and 1998, the unemployment rate among Korean men aged 25–29 years, the prime ages of career formation, rose from 4.9 to 10.9 percent. Although the rate fell after the crisis, it has plateaued at a new higher level of 7–8 percent. Thus, while indeed there was an unemployment shock around the years of the crisis, the sharp falls in fertility from 2000 to 2005 were associated with somewhat improved levels of unemployment for young men compared to the crisis years. There was also little change through the crisis in the proportion of 25–29 year olds who were working part-time. Thus, direct experience of unemployment or part-time work during the crisis or since the crisis is not sufficient to explain the fall in fertility in Korea. Indeed, a shift to low fertility had been underway for many years before the 1997 economic crisis, and fertility had already reached the low level of 1.54 births per woman before the impact of the crisis. Increases in human capital associated with protection against risk had also been underway for many years as indicated by the educational achievement data for successive age cohorts. Thus, while Eun (2003) may have placed undue emphasis on the impact of the relatively short-term economic crisis and insufficient emphasis on economic and labor-market changes that had been building for two decades, this does not negate his argument that employment has become much less secure for young people and that this has had flow-on effects to fertility. His argument that the crisis provided both a stark demonstration to young people of the risks inherent in the labor market and a stimulus for government and employers to pursue labor-market deregulation with greater vigor is likely to be highly relevant to any attempt to reverse the fall in Korea’s fertility. Suzuki (2006) makes a similar argument for Japan. He says that young people who grew up in the period of rapid economic growth tend to have high aspirations. However, the poor state of the economy of Japan throughout the 1990s discouraged the career achievement aspirations of young Japanese. Their incomes dropped relative to those of older men. Suzuki refers to the Cabinet Office Opinion Survey on people’s expectation of their future life circumstances. The percentage expecting a worse future rocketed upwards from 1995 and has remained at a highly pessimistic peak from 2001 to 2005. He concludes: “It is thought that such uncertainty about the future is one of the major sources of lowest-low fertility in Japan” (Suzuki 2006: 10). In general, governments in advanced Asian countries, like employers fearful of competition from China, have not been prepared to attempt to modify the worsening employment conditions of young workers.

Conclusion The preceding discussion indicates that delay of family formation is based not so much on experienced economic outcomes but, like any other investment, on the degree of confidence that potential parents have about their capacity to undertake family formation while not placing themselves at economic risk or at risk of falling short of their individual aspirations. Does the solution lie in lowering the


Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 37 level of aspirations or in providing a higher level of security? It is often suggested that young people’s values are “too materialistic” and this is why their fertility is low. However, rising economic aspirations and materialism have a long history, and, at present, they are encouraged by the new capitalism. It is a gross contradiction to support new capitalism and at the same time describe young people as materialistic. While young people are aware that almost inevitably they will reduce their material outcomes if they have children, most are willing to accept the loss so long as it is not overly destructive of their aspirations. In particular, they would like to have confidence that they will have adequate financial resources during the period when children are very young and that the period of loss will be temporary. The solution to low fertility therefore lies in providing a greater sense of assurance to young women and young men that, if they marry and have children, they will be supported by the society in this socially and individually important decision. If instead they look ahead to societal arrangements that severely disadvantage those who have children, they will delay their family formation until they feel they have reached a secure enough position to assume its costs. Individual delay means very low fertility for the society. Having been instrumental in the rise of the conditions leading to low fertility, governments should take the lead in providing this greater sense of security. Effectively, this implies large public transfers from those who do not have the care of young children to those who do. There is a role for other institutions as well, especially the institutions of employment. And there is scope for increased awareness among young people of the countervailing risk of delay, that is, the risk that couples will not be able to have the child they want to have. Many other risks and fears are associated with having children, and to the extent that a society is able to address these risks, it increases the chances it will have a higher fertility rate.

Notes 1 The United States is often cited as the exception to this rule and, more strongly, that the rule is invalid because it does not apply to the United States. The first point to be made is that the US occupies first position in Table 1 because of its diversity. Ethnic diversity has been shown to add about 0.2 births per woman to the US Total Fertility Rate (Lesthaeghe and Neidert 2006). Fertility for non-Hispanic whites in the US is around 1.8 and, as such, is similar to many other countries in Table 1. Religious and regional diversity contribute further to the relatively high fertility among US nonHispanic whites. The function of age-specific fertility rates in the US is bi-polar. A large section of US non-Hispanic whites, regionally and religiously concentrated, have very high fertility rates at young ages, unlike any other advanced Western society. Thus, it is difficult to talk about the US as a coherent whole. Beyond this, government assistance to families in the US through the tax system is substantial but largely unseen (for example, tax allowances for childcare expenses, child costs and mortgage payments). Childcare is readily available in the US, although there may be questions about its quality. Many US employers, through informal means, recognize the family demands of their workers. Finally, gender equity within the family is probably at a more advanced level (especially as the education level of the wife rises) than in any other advanced society (Tsuya et al. 2000).

38 Peter McDonald 2 Note: fertility in New Zealand is high because of the high fertility of the Maori population. Non-Maori fertility is also around 1.8, as in other countries in Table 2.1. 3 Cohabitation is now on the rise in some advanced East Asian countries (Iwasawa et al. 2005)


References Atoh, M., Kandiah, V., and Ivanov, S. 2004. “The second demographic transition in Asia? Comparative analysis of the low fertility situation in East and South-East Asian Countries”, Japanese Journal of Population 2(1): 42–75. Bettio, F. and Villa, P. 1998. “A Mediterranean perspective on the breakdown of the relationship between participation and fertility,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 22(2): 137–171. Chang, K-S. 2003. “The state and families in South Korea’s compressed fertility transition: a time for policy reversal?,” Journal of Population and Social Security (Population), supplement to Volume 1: 596–610. Choe, M.K., Retherford, R. and Kim, S.-K. 2004. “Very low fertility in South Korea: Patterns and prospects”. Paper presented to the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, April 1–3, Boston. Commission of the European Communities. 2005. “Confronting demographic change: a new solidarity between the generations,” Green Paper. Brussels: European Commission. D’Addio, A. and d’Ercole, M.. 2005. Trends and Determinants of Fertility Rates in OECD Countries: The Role of Policies, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers No. 27. Paris: OECD. Dalla Zuanna, G., Atoh, M., Castiglioni, M. and Kojima, K. 1998. “Late marriage among young people: the case of Italy and Japan,” Genus 54: 187–232. Eun, K-S. 2003. “Understanding recent fertility decline in Korea,” Journal of Population and Social Security (Population), supplement to Volume 1: 574–595. —— 2006. “Lowest-low fertility in the Republic of Korea: causes, consequences and policy responses,” Seminar on Fertility Transition in Asia: Opportunities and Challenges, December 18–20 2006, Bangkok, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. Frejka, T. and Sardon, J-P. 2004. Childbearing Trends and Prospects in Low-fertility Countries: A Cohort Analysis. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Jones, G. 2005. “The ‘Flight from Marriage’ in South-East and East Asia,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Winter 2005, 36(1): 93–119. Lee, S-S. 2005. “Lowest fertility and policy directions in Korea,” International Workshop on Low Fertility and Population Policies. Seoul: Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. Lesthaeghe, R. 2001. “Postponement and recuperation: recent fertility trends and forecasts in six Western European countries,” paper presented at the International Perspectives on Low Fertility Seminar, International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, Tokyo, March 21–23. Lesthaeghe, R. and Neidert, L. 2006. “The second demographic transition in the United States: exception or textbook example?” Population and Development Review, 32(4): 669–698. Lutz, W., Skirbekk, V. and Testa, M. 2006. “The low fertility trap hypothesis; forces that may lead to further postponement and fewer births in Europe,” Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2006: 167–192. McDonald, P. 2000a. “Gender equity, social institutions and the future of fertility,” Journal of Population Research 17(1): 1–16.


Explanations of low fertility in East Asia 39 McDonald, P. 2000b. “Gender equity in theories of fertility transition,” Population and Development Review 26(3): 427–439. —— 2006a. “Low fertility and the state; the efficacy of policy,” Population and Development Review 32(3). —— 2006b. “An assessment of policies that support having children from the perspectives of equity, efficiency and efficacy’, Vienna Demographic Yearbook 2006: 213–234. McDonald, P. and Kippen, R. 2001. “Labor supply prospects in 16 developed countries, 2000–2050,” Population and Development Review 27(1): 1–32. McDonald, P. and Temple, J. 2006. Immigration and the Supply of Complex Problem Solvers in the Australian Economy. Canberra: Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. Ogawa, N., Kondo, M. and Matsukura, R. 2005. “Japan’s transition from the demographic bonus to the demographic onus,” Asian Population Studies, 1(2): 207–226. Oyama, M. 2001. “Fertility decline and female labour force participation in Japan,” Graduate School of Economics, University of Chicago, IL. —— 2003a. “Measuring costs of children using equivalence scale on Japanese panel data,” Faculty of Economics, Hitotsubashi University. —— 2003b. “On the factors which caused the recent fertility decline in Japan,” The Economic Review, 54(2). Retherford, R. and Ogawa, N. 2006. “Japan’s baby bust: causes, implications, and policy responses,” in F.R. Harris (ed.), The Baby Bust: Who Will Do the Work? Who Will Pay the Taxes? Langham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: pp. 5–44. Shirahase, S. 2000. “Women’s increased higher education and the declining fertility rate in Japan,” Review of Population and Social Policy 9: 47–64. Skirbekk, V. 2003. “Age and productivity: a literature survey,” MPIDR Working Paper WP 2003-028, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock. Suzuki, T. 2006. “Lowest-low fertility and governmental ctions in Japan,” National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Tokyo. Takahashi, H. and Voss, J. 2000. “Parasite singles – a uniquely Japanese phenomenon?,” Japan Economic Institute Report No. 31 A. Washington, DC: Japan Economic Institute, Takahashi, S. 2004. “Demographic investigation of the declining fertility process in Japan”, Japanese Journal of Population 2(1): 93–116. Tsuya, N., Bumpass, L. and Choe, M.K. 2000. “Gender, employment, and housework in Japan, South Korea and the United States,” Review of Population and Social Policy 9: 195–220. Tsuya, N. and Choe, M.K. 2004. “Investments in children’s education, desired fertility, and women’s employment,” in Noriko O. Tsuya and Larry L. Bumpass (eds), Marriage, Work, and Family Life in Comparative Perspective: Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press: pp. 76–94. van Peer, C. 2002. “Desired and achieved fertility,” in E. Klijzing and M. Corijn (eds), Dynamics of Fertility and Partnership in Europe: Insights and Lessons from Comparative Research, Volume II. New York, and Geneva: United Nations: pp. 117–142. Yamada, M. 1996. The Sociology of Marriage; Will Marriage Continue to Be Delayed? Tokyo: Maruzen Library (in Japanese). Yap, M-T. 2003. “Fertility and population policy: the Singapore experience,” Journal of Population and Social Security (Population), supplement to Volume 1: 643–658. Yip, P., Li, B., Xie, K. and Lam, E.. 2006. “An analysis of the lowest Total Fertility Rate in Hong Kong SAR”, Discussion Paper No. 289, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo.

3

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses


Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura

At the end of 2006, world population was approximately 6.6 billion persons (US Census Bureau, 2006). Currently the annual rate of growth of world population is about 1.3 percent, considerably lower than the peak value of 2.1 percent in the latter half of the 1960s. Growth has slowed because of reductions in fertility, which in many countries is now below the replacement level of approximately 2.1 births per woman, as measured by the total fertility rate (TFR). Between 1970 and 1975 and 2000 and 2005, the number of countries with below-replacement fertility increased from 19 to 65. Most of these countries are in the world’s more-developed regions, but the number in less-developed regions also increased, from 0 to 19. Worldwide over this same period, the number of countries with “lowest-low” fertility (TFR below 1.3) increased from 0 to 17. A large majority of the world’s low-fertility countries are in Europe. European countries can be divided into two groups (McDonald, 2005): Group 1 includes the Nordic countries, the English-speaking countries, and the French- and Dutchspeaking countries. In this group of countries the TFR is at or above 1.5 births per woman. In most of these countries, fertility is below replacement, but in a few it is at replacement or slightly higher. Group 2 includes countries with a TFR below 1.5, including the Southern European countries and the German-speaking countries. One can expand Group 2 to include most countries of East Asia, where some of the lowest fertility in the world is found. Japan is one of those countries. Surprisingly, the Group 2 countries, including those in East Asia, tend to be characterized by strong family values that emphasize the responsibility of the family for taking care of its own members. It appears that, in modern circumstances, meeting this responsibility poses many difficulties, especially for women who work or want to work outside the home – the result being later marriage, less marriage, and fewer children within marriage. In East Asia, Japan was the first country in which the transition from high to low fertility occurred. The TFR fell rapidly during the 1950s, reaching 2.04 in 1957. It then leveled off for the most part until 1973, after which it gradually fell to 1.26 in 2005. Japan’s labor force began shrinking in 1998, and overall population, which continued to grow after 1973 because of temporary age-structure effects known as “population momentum,” finally began shrinking in 2006. Japan’s fertility decline over the past half century is now contributing substantially to rapid population


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 41 aging, as measured by the proportion of the population who are age 65 and over. Already by 2005, Japan had the oldest population in the world, and currently the pace of population aging is accelerating as the post-World War 2 baby boomers enter the retirement ages. In 1990, when it was announced that Japan’s TFR in the previous year had fallen to a record low of 1.57, the Japanese government became sufficiently alarmed about the country’s declining fertility to look into possible measures to reverse the downward trend. Major governmental concerns have included a possible loss of economic dynamism and future difficulties in maintaining the solvency of the country’s social security system, which has provided universal pension and medical coverage since 1961 (Ogawa and Retherford, 1997; Mason and Ogawa, 2001). Businesses are additionally concerned about shrinking numbers of consumers on the demand side and workers on the supply side (Clark and Ogawa, 1997). And with only one or two or even no children (and in many cases no spouse either), adults worry about who will take care of them in their old age (Ogawa and Retherford, 1997; Ogawa, 2005). Since 1990, both the central and local governments have been introducing, implementing, and strengthening a series of policies aimed at reversing the decline of fertility (Retherford, Ogawa, and Matsukura, 2001; Retherford and Ogawa, 2006). Largely as a result of government mandates put into effect after 2003, a majority of large and medium-sized employers have also initiated a variety of programs for relieving child-rearing burdens on their employees and their families. This chapter describes and analyzes these trends. The focus is on the causes of fertility decline and the actual and potential effects of the government’s efforts to raise fertility.

Trends in marriage and fertility in Japan We begin by presenting in more detail the trends in marriage and fertility that we wish to explain. The trends considered pertain to the TFR, mean age at marriage, proportion never marrying, and parity progression ratios. The TFR is the measure of fertility most commonly used by policy-makers, and it is also the principal fertility measure used in this chapter. The TFR for a particular calendar year is conventionally defined as the number of births that a woman would have by age 50 if, hypothetically, she lived through her reproductive years experiencing the age-specific fertility rates (ASFRs) that prevailed in the population in the particular calendar year. An ASFR in a particular calendar year is calculated as the number of births that occurred during the year to women of a given age, divided by the mid-year number of women of the same age. An ASFR therefore has units of births per woman per year. The TFR is calculated by summing the ASFRs (births per woman per year at each age) between the ages of 15 and 50. The term “parity” is a characteristic of a woman, referring to the number of children that she has ever borne. A parity progression ratio (PPR) is simply the fraction of women of a given parity who go on to have at least one more birth – i.e.,

the fraction who eventually progress to the next parity. In this chapter, parity 0 is subdivided into two parity states, namely never-married with no births and evermarried with no births. The first parity transition is therefore from a woman’s own birth to her first marriage, so that the “event” in this case is a first marriage instead of a birth. As in the case of the TFR, parity progression ratios are period measures calculated for a particular calendar year. Thus a PPR for a particular calendar year is defined as the probability that a woman of a given parity will have at least one more birth (or first marriage, in the case of the first parity transition) if, hypothetically, she lives through her reproductive years experiencing the duration-in-parity-specific birth rates (or first-marriage rates) that prevailed in the population in the particular calendar year. PPRs are calculated from duration-in-parity-specific birth rates (or first-marriage rates) using life table methods (Feeney, 1986; Feeney and Saito, 1985). A TFR can be calculated from PPRs as well as from ASFRs (Feeney, 1986). Usually the two TFRs differ somewhat from each other. Depending on the aims of analysis, we use one or the other of these two TFRs at different points in this chapter. A total marital fertility rate (TMFR) can also be calculated from PPRs, starting with the PPR from first marriage to first birth, and we also make use of this measure. The TMFR is actually a total ever-marital fertility rate, but for simplicity we refer to it as a total marital fertility rate. Trends in Japan’s TFR (calculated from ASFRs) and TMFR (calculated from PPRs) are graphed in Figure 3.1. The trend in overall fertility, as measured by 5.00 4.50 4.00 Number of children


42 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura

3.50 3.00

Ideal family size

2.50 TMF

2.00

R

1.50

TFR

1.00 0.50 0.00

1947 1952 1957 1962 1967 1972 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002 Year

Figure 3.1 Trends in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the Total Marital Fertility Rate (TMFR), and ideal family size (number of children), Japan, 1947–2005. Note Ideal family size is for currently married women of reproductive age. TFR is calculated from agespecific fertility rates, and TMFR is calculated from parity progression ratios.


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 43 TFR, can be divided into three stages. In the first stage between 1947 and 1957, when Japan’s economy was recovering from the devastation of World War 2, the TFR fell from 4.54 to 2.04. These were difficult times. During this period, contraception was backed up by abortion, which was legalized in 1948 and widely used because of the limited availability of effective contraception. In the second stage between 1957 and 1973, the TFR stabilized at about 2.1 births per woman. During this period, economic growth was very rapid, averaging about 10 percent a year, and most people were in a better financial position to marry and have children than they were during the previous period. The result of this increasing prosperity was that age at marriage stopped rising and marital fertility stopped falling. In the third stage from 1973 to the present, the TFR fell gradually from 2.14 in 1973 to an all-time low of 1.26 in 2005. In the long run, a TFR as low as 1.26 implies rapid population decline. If the TFR were to remain constant at this level in the future, and if mortality were to remain constant at its present low level, population would eventually start declining at a rate of approximately 40 percent per generation. The length of a generation is approximately equal to the mean age at child-bearing, which in Japan is 30 years. For a while, however, the population would decline more slowly than this, because of the phenomenon of population momentum referred to earlier. The catalyst for the resumption of fertility decline after 1973 was the oil shock of 1973, caused by major oil-price increases imposed by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Because Japan imports virtually all of its oil, the steep rise in the price of oil had an especially large impact. The economy, which had been growing at a rate of about 10 percent a year, fell into recession, followed three years later by a rebound to a lower growth rate of 3−4 percent per year. Overall price inflation (for all goods, not just oil) during those three years was 53 percent. As a consequence of this inflation, unions fought for and won large wage increases for regular full-time workers, causing struggling companies to start hiring part-time workers in large numbers at much lower wages. These jobs were filled mainly by women. Previously many of these women did piece-work at home, but after 1973 they increasingly engaged in production work outside the home, which was less compatible with child-rearing and therefore part of the explanation of the resumption of fertility decline. About half of the decline in the TFR (calculated from PPRs) between 1973 and the present has occurred because of later marriage and less marriage, and that is why, in Figure 3.1, TMFR has fallen more gradually than TFR. TMFR hardly changed after 1998, indicating that later marriage and less marriage account for virtually all of the decline in TFR after that year. The effect of marriage on fertility is especially strong in Japan because only about 2 percent of births occur out of wedlock, a percentage that is much lower than in Europe, North America, or Oceania. Between 1970 and 2005 the singulate mean age at marriage (SMAM, calculated from age-specific proportions still single in a census) in Japan rose from 27.5 to 31.1 years for men and from 24.6 to 29.4 years for women, as shown in Figure 3.2. Over the same period, the synthetic proportion still single at age 50, S50 (calculated from age-specific first-marriage rates in a given year), rose from

44 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura 32 30

Age

28

Men

26

22 20 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Year

Figure 3.2 Trends in Mean Age at Marriage (SMAM) by sex, Japan, 1950−2005.

9 to 27 percent for men and from 4 to 24 percent for women, as shown in Figure 3.3. By 2005, Japan was far from the “universal marriage society” that it was in 1970. Both SMAM and S50 continued to increase rapidly between 2000 and 2005. The increase in SMAM was especially rapid for women, reflecting a large jump in proportion single at age 25−29, from 54 to 59 percent. 30 25 20 Percent


Women 24

Male 15 Female

10 5 0

1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Year

Figure 3.3 Trends in the synthetic proportion still single at age 50, by sex, 1951−2005. Note: The synthetic proportion still single at age 50 is calculated from age-specific first-marriage rates in the specified calendar year using life table methods. Age-specific first-marriage rates are calculated from census and vital registration data.

Figure 3.4 shows trends in PPRs for successive parity transitions, labeled B−M (birth to first marriage), M−1 (first marriage to first birth), 1−2, 2−3, and so on. Before 1973, PPR declines were concentrated at 2−3 and higher-order transitions. The downward spikes in PPRs in 1966 occurred because 1966 was the Year of the Fire Horse. According to superstition, girls born in that year will be unlucky in life. After 1973, PPR declines were concentrated at B−M, M−1, and 1−2. Declines in these latter three PPRs were somewhat steeper during the bubble economy that emerged during the latter half of the 1980s, when housing prices skyrocketed, and during the “lost decade” of economic stagnation after the bubble burst in 1990. Only after early 2002 did the economy finally enter a period of slow but steady growth that has persisted until the present time. This economic recovery has been accompanied by an increase in PPR(M−1), which, however, commenced in 1999 before the recovery began. The likely reasons for the increase in PPR(M−1) but not other PPRs will be discussed later. Although PPR(M−1) increased, PPR(B−M) continued to decline. (Note that the S50 values in Figure 3.3 are calculated as 1−PPR(B−M) in Figure 3.4.) Figure 3.5 shows that, although the proportion ever marrying, PPR(B−M), continued to decline, the upward trend in mean age at marriage (MAM) finally started to level off after 1997 and even to decline slightly, for both women and their husbands. MAM is calculated as the mean age at marriage for marriages that actually occurred in the particular calendar year. By contrast, SMAM is calculated from age-specific proportions single, which are influenced not only by marriages 100

B to M

90

M to 1 1 to 2

80 70 PPPR (percent)


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 45

60 50 40 3 to 4

30 20

2 to 3

4+ to 5+

10 0 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Year

Figure 3.4 Trends in Period Parity Progression Ratios (PPPRs), Japanese women, 1950−2005. Note: Computed from census and vital registration data.

46 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura 34.0 32.0


Age

30.0 Men

28.0 26.0

Women

24.0 22.0 20.0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.5 Mean Age at First Marriage (MAM), by sex, 1955–2002. Note: Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.

in the particular calendar year under consideration but also by marriages that occurred further in the past. Another difference between the two measures is that MAM is influenced by the age structure of the population, whereas SMAM is not. Given these differences, it is not surprising that the trends MAM and SMAM in Figures 3.2 and 3.5 differ from each other. Later we shall discuss some possible reasons why MAM leveled off and even declined slightly after 1998. The earlier graph in Figure 3.1 also shows that, among currently married women, ideal family size (based on survey questions that ask the respondent about her own ideal number of children) has hardly changed over time. Ideal family size remains at about 2.5 children, more than one child higher than the TFR. The existence of this large gap suggests that if ideal family size were eventually to shift downward to 2.0 children, as seems likely, the TFR could decline to a level even lower than its 2005 value of 1.26.

Causes of fertility decline after 1973 There are two major proximate causes of fertility decline in Japan:

•• later marriage and less marriage •• fertility decline within marriage.

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 47 Each of these two proximate causes has its own set of causes. The two sets overlap but are not quite the same. Causes of later marriage and less marriage after 1973


As discussed in more detail elsewhere (Retherford, Ogawa, and Matsukura, 2001; Retherford and Ogawa, 2006; Yamada, 1996, 2001, 2004, 2006), the main reasons for later marriage and less marriage after 1973 in Japan include the following:

•• •• •• •• •• •• •• ••

remarkable educational gains by women a rising proportion of single women who work for pay outside the home the near-disappearance of arranged marriage a major decline in coresidence with parents for many so-called “parasite singles,” the prospect of a substantial drop in standard of living if they get married major increases in the prevalence and social acceptability of premarital sex emergence of a “new-single concept” that it is socially acceptable to enjoy single life without pressure to get married women’s increasing desire for more help from husbands and a more egalitarian marital relationship.

A brief summary of key evidence relating to the above points follows (for a more detailed discussion, see Retherford and Ogawa, 2006). Numerous studies throughout the world have shown that education is a key determinant of both marriage timing and permanent non-marriage, mainly because it expands women’s horizons, including new opportunities for employment outside the home (Kohler et al., 2002; United Nations, 1995). In Japan, the proportion of women in the relevant age range who were enrolled in colleges and universities increased from 5 to 50 percent between 1955 and 2005. Work for pay also influences marriage, in large part because a paycheck reduces the financial pressure on single women to get married. In the case of Japan, the proportion of currently married women who worked before marriage increased from 49 to 99 percent between 1955 and 2003 (these are the calendar years in which the marriages occurred) (Retherford and Ogawa, 2006). The decline of arranged marriage has also contributed to later marriage and less marriage. Between 1955 and 2002 the proportion of marriages that were arranged fell from 63 to 2 percent (Retherford and Ogawa, 2006). As a result, young singles have increasingly had to find their own spouses, which is not so easy in Japan, because the decline of arranged marriage has not been fully compensated by the emergence of a well-developed marriage market. For many women, meeting and getting to know potential spouses is a problem. Contact with potential spouses tends to be limited to a small circle of colleagues at work and former schoolmates. Among single women age 20 and over, the proportion reporting they have no male friend (neither a boyfriend nor any other male friend) was 34 percent in the 1990 round of the National Survey on Family Planning, 38 percent in the 1994 round,


48 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura 41 percent in both the 1996 and 1998 rounds, and 39 percent in the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families and Generations (Retherford and Ogawa, 2006). All of these surveys were conducted by the Mainichi Newspapers of Japan. Also between 1955 and 2002, the proportion of young couples who coresided with parents when they got married fell from 64 to 29 percent, making it financially more difficult for the average couple to get married because of the costs to non-coresiding couples of setting up an independent household (Retherford and Ogawa, 2006). The proportion of young single adults who live with parents is still high, however, relative to comparable proportions in other industrial countries. A related development is the growth in the number of “parasite singles,” a term coined by Yamada (1996) to describe young single persons who work for pay, live with parents, contribute little or nothing to household finances, and therefore have ample money to lead the good life. The term “parasite single” is somewhat of a misnomer, however, because in many cases these young single persons would like to get married soon but fail to do so because of difficulties in finding a suitable spouse, as will be discussed in more detail later. In 2004, the proportion of single employed women who were living with their parents was 73 percent at age 20−24, 67 percent at age 25−29, and 69 percent at age 30−34 (computed from the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families and Generations). Increase in the prevalence and social acceptability of premarital sex in Japan has meant that it is increasingly unnecessary to get married in order to have sex, thereby also contributing to later marriage and less marriage. Between 1974 and 1999, the proportion of junior college and university students who reported having had sexual intercourse increased from 23 to 63 percent among men and from 11 to 51 percent among women (Retherford et al., 1996; Japanese Association for Sex Education, 2001). Between 1990 and 2004, the proportion of single women age 20 and over reporting current use of contraception rose from 39 to 57 percent (Retherford et al., 2001). Many of the value changes contributing to later marriage and less marriage are embodied in the rise of the so-called “new-single concept,” which received considerable publicity in the Japanese press in the late 1980s and which is closely associated with the rise of the “parasite single” lifestyle. The new-single concept is that it is socially acceptable to enjoy single life without pressure to get married. Survey data show that the proportion favoring the new-single concept was 78 percent in 1988 and 76 percent in 1993 among single women and 59 percent in 1988 and 62 percent in 1993 among single men, indicating that the values embodied in the new-single concept were already accepted by a majority of single persons before the mass media publicized the new-single concept (Retherford et al., 1996). Collectively, all the above changes affecting marriage, but especially the increases in women’s educational attainment and work for pay outside the home, have led to a rise in values of individualism among young single women. The rise of individualism has also promoted later marriage and less marriage. Women increasingly do not want to live with a mother-in-law, although this is rather difficult to avoid because nowadays in low-fertility Japan about three-quarters of


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 49 young men are eldest sons, who traditionally coreside with the parents. Women also increasingly want a more egalitarian marriage with more help from husbands with child-rearing and housework, although this is difficult to achieve because of men’s long working hours and because men’s views about helping with childrearing and housework, though changing, lag behind women’s views (Tsuya and Bumpass, 2004). Table 3.1 provides additional evidence pertaining to the effect of women’s rising educational attainment on proportion never marrying. The table is based on pooled data for women age 22 and over in each of six surveys between 1990 and 2004. A proportional hazards model (which can be viewed as a multivariate life table) is used to model the effects of education, childhood residence, and year of survey on progression to first marriage – or, equivalently, as in Table 3.1, not Table 3.1 Model estimates of proportion of women still single at age 40, by education, childhood residence, and year of survey, Japan, 1990–2000 Predictor variable Education Jr. high or less† Sr. high Jr. college University Childhood residence Urban Rural† Year of survey 1990† 1994 1996 1998 2000 2004

Model including education and childhood residence

Model without education and childhood residence

6 7 12* 21* 10* 9 5 8* 9* 11* 11* 20*

5 8* 9* 11* 12* 20*

Source: Computed from pooled data from the 1990, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2004 rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 round of the National Survey of Population, Families and Generations, conducted by the Mainichi Newspapers of Japan. Notes In the full model, the predicted percentages of single 16-year-old women who will marry by age 40 were computed from a proportional hazard model with education, childhood residence, and year of survey as predictor variables. All of the predictor variables are represented by sets of dummy variables in the underlying hazard regressions. The percentages in any given panel of the table (such as the panel for education) control for all the other predictor variables in the model by setting them at their mean values. The second model is the same as the full model, except that education and childhood residence are omitted as predictor variables. The models were estimated only for women who were at least 22 years old (pooled over the six surveys) when they were interviewed, so that their education was completed in most cases. Indicates a reference category in the underlying hazard regression. * Indicates that the variable coefficient in the underlying hazard regression differs significantly from zero at the 5 percent level.

†


50 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura progressing to first marriage. Ideally, a statistical model of progression to first marriage should allow for non-proportionality, because in reality the effects of these three predictor variables are to lower first-marriage risks at younger ages and raise them at older ages, to the extent that marriage is delayed. Thus the effects are not constant (i.e., not proportional) over age. Because of this, the model does not yield good estimates of the effects of the three predictor variables on mean age at first marriage, and these effects are therefore not shown in the table. As Allison (1995) points out, however, the assumption of proportional hazards is usually defensible if all one is interested in is the probability of “failing” or “not failing” by the end of the multivariate life table. In Table 3.1, “not failing” is indicated by the model-predicted probability of still being single at age 40. The specification of an average effect that is constant rather than varying over age usually makes little difference in the proportion who fail or do not fail by the end of the life table. Table 3.1 shows that even though the proportion of women who never marry increases with education (with childhood residence and year of survey controlled), improvements in women’s educational attainment between 1990 and 2004 do not explain the large increase in proportion never marrying that occurred over the same period. This is indicated by the finding that the model in which education and childhood residence are controlled and the model in which they are not controlled yield almost identical estimates of the trend in the proportion never marrying. The likely reasons for this unexpected finding are:

•• Age-specific first marriage risks have declined substantially and to roughly the same extent in all childhood residence and education groups.

•• Compositional changes in the population by educational attainment were

fairly small between 1990 and 2004, with the result that the across-the-board changes in age-specific first-marriage risks dominate the trend in the proportion who never marry, and that changes in population composition by childhood residence and education account for almost nothing.

The inference that across-the-board effects dominate is supported by Figures 3.6 and 3.7, which show, for women and men separately, trends in mean age at first marriage by education. The figures show that mean age at first marriage has been increasing rapidly and at roughly the same rate in all education categories for both women and men. (The same is true of the trends in mean age at marriage in each of the two childhood residence categories – results not shown.) Figure 3.7 for women also shows that the trends for “junior high or senior high” and “junior college” are almost the same, so that changes in population composition pertaining to these two education categories have little or no effect on the trend age at first marriage. In this regard, it should be noted that it is still true in Japan that most female high-school graduates who continue their education go to junior college rather than university. The findings in Table 3.1 and Figures 3.6 and 3.7 do not necessarily mean, however, that rising educational attainment and the shift toward urban residence have had no effect on the trends in mean age at marriage and proportion never

34.0 32.0

Age

30.0

Junior college or university

28.0

Junior high or senior high

24.0 22.0 20.0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.6 Average age at first marriage for men, by education, 1955–2002. Note: Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.

34 32 30 University Age


26.0

28 26

Jr. college

Jr. high or Sr. high

24 22 20 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.7 Average age at first marriage for women, by education, 1955–2002. Note: Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.

marrying among women over the time period in question. It is highly likely that they have had an effect. Our findings suggest, however, that this effect, to the extent that it exists, may operate mainly through changes in marriage-related attitudes and values (often occurring after a time lag) that tend to be shared throughout the population. Figure 3.8 provides further information relating to the effect of women’s work for pay before marriage on the mean age at marriage and the proportion never marrying. The figure shows that almost all of the increase in the proportion of currently married women who worked before marriage occurred before 1980, suggesting that change in the proportion of women who worked before marriage does not explain much of the increases in mean age at marriage and proportion never marrying that occurred after 1980 – and especially after 1993, when the proportion who worked for pay before marriage actually declined. Of course, there is much that is not revealed in Figure 3.8, because changes in the proportion who worked before marriage tell us nothing about changes in type of work (parttime or full-time), occupational structure, rates of pay, or job tenure (how long a woman worked before marriage). Women’s work before marriage plays an important but rather subtle role in Yamada’s (1996, 2006) argument that marriage in contemporary Japan is increasingly delayed or forgone because, for working “parasite single” women, marriage is likely to entail a substantial drop in standard of living. The essence of Yamada’s argument (somewhat modified and elaborated here), is the following: 100 90

Worked before marriage Worked for pay before marriage

80 Proportion (percent)



70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.8 Trends in the proportions of currently married women who worked before marriage and who worked for pay before marriage, Japan, 1955–2002. Note Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 53 In the years after World War 2 until the 1970s, the parents of young adults tended to be relatively poor, having entered the labor force some 20 to 30 years earlier, either before or during the war or soon after the war when the economy was still recovering from wartime devastation. By the mid-1950s, however, the young unmarried male adult children of these parents were finding it relatively easy to get regular full-time jobs with seniority-based promotions in the rapidly expanding economy, a situation that persisted until the oil shock of 1973. Of necessity, these young men helped their parents financially, often turning over their earnings and receiving an allowance in return, especially if they lived with their parents. Reflecting higher fertility in the past, these young men tended to have several siblings. In conformity with Confucian tradition, eldest sons tended to marry first and then coreside with the parents. Younger siblings (both sons and daughters) were likely to have to move out of the parental household due to over-crowded living conditions. Typically, the parents arranged the marriages of these younger children (especially daughters) when they moved out. The contemporary situation is quite different. Today’s parents in their 40s and 50s are financially much better off than their counterparts were several decades ago, and they typically have only two children, so none of their adult children has to move out of the household as a result of over-crowding. On the contrary, most parents consider themselves lucky if one of their children continues to stay on and live with them. Virtually all of their unmarried adult children work, but in most cases the parents no longer need financial support from them, so these “parasite singles” typically contribute little or nothing to household expenses and therefore have ample money to spend on expensive clothes, restaurants, vacations, and other aspects of the good life. Another aspect of the contemporary situation is that, for young adults entering the labor force, good jobs are harder to find than they were during the pre-1973 years when the economy was rapidly expanding. As a result of the 1973 oil shock, the collapse of the bubble economy in 1989, and the lost decade of the 1990s, the economy has gone through two periods of major restructuring, each resulting in an increase in the proportion of jobs that are not regular full-time jobs. These non-regular jobs are part-time or other temporary jobs that are poorly paid with little scope for advancement. Many part-time jobs are actually full-time jobs but classified as part-time jobs, which are temporary in the sense that they can be terminated at short notice. In the remainder of this chapter, we shall refer to regular full-time jobs simply as “full-time jobs” and to part-time and other temporary jobs simply as “part-time jobs”. Employees are in one or the other of these two categories. There is very little mobility between the two categories, and that is why Japan’s labor market is often characterized as “highly segmented”. What little mobility does occur mostly happens when a woman quits a full-time job in order to care for young children for a few years, after which case she usually has to come back to a part-time job. Upward mobility from part-time to full-time status is rare. At the present time, annual income averages about US$10,000 for a part-time job and about US$40,000 for a full-time job.

(Here and elsewhere in this chapter, we assume a conversion rate of 100 yen to the US dollar.) During the first period of restructuring following the 1973 oil shock, the parttime jobs that were being created in large numbers were filled mainly by women. During the second period of restructuring during the 1990s, many more such jobs were created, and this time they were being filled not only by women but also by young men who were not able to find full-time jobs. This is shown in Figure 3.9, which graphs the trend in the proportion of employed men and women age 20−29 (regardless of marital status) working in part-time jobs. Even full-time jobs are becoming less secure as the proportion of firms that offer lifetime employment and seniority-based promotion declines, as shown in Figure 3.10. The various changes just described have resulted in a growing gap between the average standard of living enjoyed by young single working women living with their parents (the “parasite singles”) and the average standard of living that these women are likely to have if they get married. Not surprisingly in this situation, the income and occupation of prospective husbands are important mate-selection criteria for Japanese single women. Data from the 1988 National Family Survey and the 1998 round of the National Survey on Family Planning, both conducted by the Mainichi Newspapers of Japan, demonstrate this point. These surveys asked 20 18 16 14 Percent



12 10

Women

8 6 Men

4 2 0 1972

1977

1982

1987

1992

1997

2002

Year

Figure 3.9 Trend in the proportion working in part-time jobs among paid employees age 20–29, by sex, 1972–2005. Note Computed from published data from annual rounds of the Labour Force Survey (Statistics Bureau, various years).

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 55 60

Proportion (percent)


50

40

5000+

1000–4999

30

300–999 30–99

20 100–299

10

0 1988

1990

1993

1996

1999

2002

Year

Figure 3.10 Trend in the proportion of firms reporting that they follow the lifetime-employment system, by firm size (number of employees), Japan, 1988–2002. Source: Survey on Employment Management (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, various years).

single women to rank each of the following mate-selection criteria, relating to characteristics of prospective husbands, from 1 to 4 according to their degree of importance, with 4 indicating “very important”: income, occupation, coresidence with parents, education, age, and parents’ property. Average scores for these criteria are shown in Figure 3.11, which shows that income and occupation are the most important mate-selection criteria among those considered. Although young single women prefer men with good incomes, the hard reality is that it is difficult for these women to find husbands who meet their income criteria. Because of this, many young single women end up delaying or forgoing marriage. Men also tend to delay marriage until they feel able to support a family at the expected standard of living. To investigate more precisely how difficult it is for young single women to find a suitable husband, Yamada (2004) undertook a small survey on “Consciousness of Risk Involved in Childrearing in the Context of Lifetime Planning Among Young Adults,” which was conducted in the city of Hirosaki (Hirosaki-shi) in Aomori prefecture (sample size: 444 respondents age 25−34; response rate of 44 percent) and Nerima ward (Nerima-ku) in Tokyo (sample size: 609 respondents age 25−34; response rate of 50 percent). At the time the survey was taken, Hirosaki-shi had relatively low incomes and high unemployment, and Nerima-ku had relatively high incomes and low unemployment. Data from these surveys are analyzed in Tables 3.2 and 3.3. The tables show:

56 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura 3.3 Income 3.1 Occupation

2.9

Score


2.7 Coresiding with parent(s)

2.5 2.3

Education

Age

2.1 1.9 Parent’s property 1.7 1.5 1988

1998 Year

Figure 3.11 Change in score for mate-selection criteria among single women between 1988–1998.

•• On average, single women’s expected incomes of prospective husbands far exceed the actual incomes of single men.

•• The proportion single among men age 25−34 falls steeply as income increases.

Considered together, Tables 3.2 and 3.3 suggest that the trends toward later marriage and less marriage in Japan have been more pronounced among those with lower incomes – a category that has been growing as a consequence of the general trend, not confined to Japan, of rising income inequalities. Yamada did not control for educational attainment, but his finding of a negative effect of income on proportion single among young men would probably be even stronger if he had done so, because education and income are positively correlated and, as seen earlier in Figure 3.6, age at marriage rises with education. On the other hand, if he had controlled for single years of age within the 25−34 age group, the negative effect of income on proportion single would have been weaker. Further research based on data for the whole country, with higher survey response rates and more controls, is needed to test the validity and generality of Yamada’s findings.

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 57 Table 3.2 Men’s income and women’s expectations of prospective husband’s income, never-married persons age 25–34 in Hirosaki-shi in Aomori prefecture and Nerima-ku ward in Tokyo, 2003 (percent in income category)


Annual income

Hirosaki-shi Men’s income Women’s expectations Nerima-ku Men’s income Women’s expectations

¥ 2 million (men) Income not important (women)

> ¥ 2 million > ¥ 4 million > ¥ 6 million

48 31

52 69

2 54

1 14

34 30

66 70

24 66

4 39

Source: Yamada (2004).

Table 3.3 Proportion never married among men age 25–34 by work status and annual income in Hirosaki-shi in Aomori prefecture and Nerima-ku ward in Tokyo, 2003 (percent)

Work status Full-time Part-time Self-employed Annual income ¥ 2 million ¥ 2–4 million > ¥ 4 million

Hirosaki-shi

Nerima-ku

44 (114) 76 (59) 71 (31)

48 (151) 89 (70) 41 (34)

70 55 15

85 64 35

Source: Yamada (2004). Note In the case of work status, numbers in parentheses are the numbers of men age 25–34 on which the percentages are based.

Causes of falling marital fertility after 1973 As seen earlier in Figure 3.4, virtually all of the decline in marital fertility after 1973 is due to declines in PPR(M−1) and PPR(1−2) – i.e., in progression from marriage to first birth and progression from first to second birth. After 1997, however, PPR(M−1) began to increase, while PPR(1−2) continued to decline. The aim of this section is to explain not only the overall declines in PPR(M−1) and PPR(1−2) but also the increase in PPR(M−1) after 1997.

58 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura The main reasons for the overall decline in marital fertility after 1973 are:

•• The direct costs of children have risen, involving a substitution of quality for quantity of children.

•• The opportunity costs of children, in terms of lost income for women, have risen.

•• Preferences have shifted away from children toward “other goods,” involving Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 05:43 01 December 2012

a decline in the “consumption utility” of children.

•• In many respects, families are less secure, so that the wife’s job has come to play a more important role in family finances.

Evidence in support of these points (summarized, for the most part, from Retherford and Ogawa, 2006) will now be examined. Estimates of the direct costs of children under different scenarios around the year 2000 are available from the research division of the AIU Life Insurance Company of Japan (2001). The least expensive scenario assumes that the child will be educated through university in government schools, in which case the cost is US$286,000. This includes food, shelter, and education but not other expenses such as juku (expensive cram schools for passing entrance examinations to get into the best schools). The most expensive scenario assumes attendance at private schools all the way though medical school, in which case the cost is US$630,100. The indirect opportunity cost of children, in terms of a woman’s lost income when she drops out of the labor force temporarily to have children, is often much larger than the direct cost of children, especially for women with higher education. A recent government White Paper (Cabinet Office, 2005) estimates this opportunity cost under two different scenarios. In the first scenario, the woman graduates university, works full-time for six years, drops out for six years to have children, and then comes back to another full-time job. Income lost by age 60 (including pension benefits after age 60) as a result of temporarily dropping out is US$993,600. The second scenario is the same as the first except that the woman returns to a part-time job. Income lost by age 60 is US$2,272,000. The “consumption utility” of children has fallen for several reasons, some of which are demographic in nature. People today typically grow up with only one sibling who is close in age. Teenagers and young adults rarely interact with little children, who are simply not part of their lives. As a consequence, young adults increasingly do not know how to enjoy children. Later marriage magnifies this effect, because young adults increasingly settle into a lifestyle in which children play no part. Accompanying the rise of this new lifestyle is the emergence of new values of such as “finding oneself,” “realizing one’s potential,” and (a fairly new development for women) pursuing a career. Some European demographers refer to these new values as “post-modern fertility preferences” (e.g., van de Kaa, 2006). The consumption utility of children has undoubtedly fallen in Japan, but, given the constancy of ideal family size at about 2.5 children (Figure 3.1), there appears to be considerable potential for further decline. In some ways, the evolving nature of the modern economy and society also


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 59 means less security for families. The decline of the extended family means that elderly parents and other relatives are increasingly not there to help a young family during hard times. Economic globalization and market-oriented reforms cause more job competition and increasingly less job security as the shift away from the lifetime-employment and seniority-based wage system continues (already mentioned in the discussion of Figures 3.9 and 3.10). Couples perceive that the husband’s future stream of income is increasingly uncertain, and that they need two incomes so that they do not have to sell a home or other assets if one spouse is unemployed for a while. Thus, a woman’s job becomes more precious, and this also contributes to later child-bearing and fewer children. The rise of divorce also means less security for families. Wives increasingly perceive that they need a good job as a hedge against divorce, especially since they are the ones who are likely to have custody of the children in case of divorce. As a consequence, women increasingly tend to view their jobs as relatively more important and having children as relatively less important. Husbands are also increasingly less keen about having children (or having another one), because in the event of divorce, husbands are likely to have to pay child support without the benefit of the day-to-day joys of children. Japan’s crude divorce rate (divorces per 1,000 population per year) rose from 0.74 to 2.15 between 1960 and 2005. By way of comparison, the rate was 2.09 in France and 2.59 in Germany in 2004. As Ogawa and Ermisch (1994) have noted, the rise of divorce in Japan is related to women’s increasing participation in paid employment, especially regular fulltime employment. A new development is that, according to the 2004 pension reform, a divorcee will be qualified to receive not only her own basic old-age pension but also up to half of her former husband’s earnings-related pension, starting in 2007. Recently, numerous popular press articles have reported that many Japanese wives are currently postponing divorce until 2007 in order to take advantage of this reform. Indeed, the upward trend in the crude divorce rate has recently leveled off in Japan. If the press reports are correct, the trend may resume its upward climb after 2007, especially if Japan’s economy continues to expand so that the proportion of currently married women employed in full-time jobs also resumes its long-term upward climb. Another factor that helps account for continuing marital fertility decline during the 1990s is the stagnating economy during that period. Micro-level data gathered in the 2000 round of the National Survey on Family Planning asked a question: “Has the recent growth of economic insecurity in Japan resulting from the bursting of the bubble economy and business-restructuring due to globalization affected your personal decision about when to have children and how many children to have?” The responses were: 11 percent said “largely affected,” 18 percent said “somewhat affected,” 35 percent said “not affected very much,” and 35 percent said “not affected at all”. A statistical analysis showed that, as expected, women in lower-income households were more affected (Ogawa, 2003). It remains to explain the recent rise in PPR(M−1) in Figure 3.4. This rise first became apparent in 1998, the year when the economy, which had been showing signs of recovery, slid back into recession. By 1998, Japan was eight years into

its “lost decade,” and many couples had been delaying marriage, waiting for the good times to return. When their hopes of an upturn were dashed in 1998, many of them gave up waiting any longer, got married, and had their first child soon thereafter. This also helps explain why mean age at marriage (MAM) leveled off and even declined slightly after 1998 in Figure 3.5. But times were tough, so many with lower incomes had to move in with parents. This is reflected in the reversal of the downward trend in coresidence with parents at the time of marriage that also occurred after 1998, as shown in Figure 3.12. One might have expected that newly married coresiding women would take advantage of built-in baby-sitting by a mother or mother-in-law and not quit their jobs when they married or when they had their first birth, but this did not happen, as shown in Figure 3.13. The proportion who quit when they got married continued to decline, as expected, but this decline was more than compensated by a large increase in the proportion who quit when they had their first birth. It is likely that at least part of the explanation of the rise in the proportion who quit when they had their first birth is that a large proportion of these women were working in part-time jobs and therefore were not eligible for childcare leave and had to quit under pressure from employers during a period of economic hard times. This interpretation is consistent with Yamada’s earlier-mentioned survey finding of greater delays in marriage among men with lower incomes, who, when they ultimately marry, are more likely to marry a woman who is working part-time. It is also consistent with the rise in the proportion of single women who work part-time, as shown in Figure 3.14. 70 60 50 Percent



40 30 20 10 0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.12 Trends in the proportion of newly married couples who coresided with parents at the time of marriage: 1955–2002. Note Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 61 10 90 80

Quit working at marriage or first birth


Proportion

70 60 50

Quit working at marriage

40 30 20

Quit working at first birth

10 0 1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.13 Among currently married women who have had at least one birth and who worked before marriage, trends in the proportions who quit when they got married, who quit when they had a first birth, and who quit either when they got married or when they had a first birth, Japan, 1965–2002. Note Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.

Also contributing to the rise in PPR(M−1) has been the rise in the proportion of newly married women who were pregnant when they got married, as shown in Figure 3.15. This is a long-term trend that did not accelerate after 1998, so it cannot by itself explain the upturn in PPR(M−1) after 1998. A related development, however, is that during the latter half of the 1990s the trend in mean age at marriage among those who were pregnant when they got married diverged from the trend in mean age at marriage among those who were not pregnant when they got married, as shown in Figure 3.16. We interpret this to mean that the couples who had delayed marriage during the last decade but finally gave up and got married after 1998 were older on average, and that the immediate impetus for them to get married was often a pregnancy, which, if accidental, would likely have been aborted had they been younger. Figure 3.16 suggests that this mechanism contributed not only to the increase in PPR(M−1) but also to the increase in coresidence after 1998 (Figure 3.12). Another mechanism that may have contributed to the increase in PPR(M−1) is the leveling off of the trend in mean age at marriage after 1998 (Figure 3.5), which apparently occurred because older unmarried couples finally gave up on waiting for the good times to return before getting married. The leveling off of the trend may have led to a temporary bunching of marriages (Bongaarts and Feeney, 1998), and if so, there may have been some bunching of first births as well. But this bunching effect (or tempo effect, as it is usually called) appears to have been small, because although PPR(M−1) increased, PPR(B−M) did not.

10 Part-time or full-time

9 8

Full-time


Percent

7 6 5 4 3 2

Part-time

1 0

1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Year

Figure 3.14 Among single women not currently enrolled in school, trends in the proportions working part-time and full-time, 1990–2004. Note Computed from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations. 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.15 Trends in proportion of women who were pregnant at the time of first marriage. Note Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 63 30.0 29.0

Pregnant at marriage

28.0 27.0


Age

26.0 25.0 24.0 23.0 22.0 Not pregnant at marriage

21.0 20.0 1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

Year of marriage

Figure 3.16 Trends in mean age at marriage for those who were pregnant and those who were not at time of first marriage. Note Computed from pooled data from various rounds of the National Survey on Family Planning and the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families, and Generations.

Government efforts to raise fertility The Japanese government became actively concerned about low fertility in 1990, when it was announced that the TFR for 1989 was 1.57 births per woman, the lowest it had ever been. The media picked up the story and “1.57 shock” made headlines throughout Japan. In short order, also in 1990, the government established an interministry committee on “creating a sound environment for bearing and rearing children” and over the next 15 years introduced a series of measures aimed at raising fertility, as shown in Table 3.4. These measures have been described in some detail by Retherford and Ogawa (2006). What follows are a few highlights. The Japanese government has employed two approaches to raising fertility:

•• direct subsidies for marriage, child-bearing, and child-rearing •• changing the institutional environment to facilitate marriage, child-bearing, and child-rearing.

The government introduced direct subsidies in the form of child allowances in 1972. The intent was not pro-natalist but rather to help low-income families who were being left behind by swift economic growth and the rapid social changes that went with it. After 1990, new pro-natalist concerns led to substantial increases in the allowances. Currently a couple receives an allowance of US$100 per month



Table 3.4 Major Japanese government actions aimed at raising fertility TFR

Year

Action

2.14 1.54

1972 1990

1.53 1.50 1.42 1.34 1.33

1991 1994 1995 1999 2001

1.32 1.29

2002 2003 2003

1.28 1.26

2004 2005

Establishment of child allowances (no pro-natalist intent at first) Establishment of inter-ministry committee on “Creating a sound environment for bearing and rearing children” Enactment of Childcare Leave Act Announcement of Angel Plan for 1995–1999 Enactment of Childcare and Family Care Leave Act Announcement of New Angel Plan for 2000–2004 Amendment to the Employment Insurance Law, specifying 40% of salary to be paid to regular full-time employees during childcare leave Announcement of Plus One plan Enactment of Next Generation law Enactment of law on “Basic Measures to Cope with a Declining Fertility Society” Announcement of New Angel Plan for 2005–2009 Extension of childcare leave to part-time workers, with some limitations

Sources: NIPSSR (2003) and other government sources.

per child under 3 years of age, regardless of the child’s birth order. In the case of children older than 3 years who have not yet finished elementary school (approximately age 12), the family receives US$50 per month for first and second children and US$100 per month for third and higher-order children. The eligibility criterion for a worker with, for example, a dependent spouse and two dependent children is that the worker’s taxable income must be less than US$57,400 if the worker is self-employed and US£64,600 if the worker is a salaried employee. There is some regional variability in these income thresholds, however. In 1991, the parliament passed the Childcare Leave Act. The intent of this law was to make it easier for working women to have children. The law provided up to one year of unpaid childcare leave for either the mother or the father for a child less than one year of age. Benefits were restricted to full-time employees in firms with more than 30 employees. Part-time workers were excluded. In 1994, the government announced its “Angel Plan” for 1995 to 1999. Again, the intent was to make it easier for working women to have children. The Angel Plan called for major expansion of the number of day-care centers throughout the country. It also called for expansion of after-school sports and other afterschool programs and for family-support centers. The family-support centers provided various additional services, such as picking up a child after school if the parents were working and could not do so. Eligibility criteria (i.e., income criteria) for these services varied by locality. Private-sector day-care services also expanded during this period to serve those not eligible for public-sector day-care services. The 1995 Childcare and Family Leave Act superseded the 1991 Childcare Leave Act. Under the 1995 law, full-time employees were again eligible for one


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 65 year of leave for a child under one year of age. Part-time workers were again excluded. (As already noted, about half of married women workers work parttime. About three-quarters of part-time workers are women.) An employee now received 25 percent salary during the leave, paid by the Employment Insurance Fund (originally established to pay unemployment benefits). The employee also accumulated seniority while on leave, and the employer had to continue paying the employer’s share of social security contributions, while the government paid the employee’s share. In 1999, the government announced a New Angel Plan for 2000 to 2004. The new plan called for further expansion of day-care centers, after-school programs, and family-support centers. It should be noted that government-provided daycare centers are heavily subsidized, especially in major urban areas. In Tokyo, the monthly cost incurred by government to fund day-care services for one infant currently exceeds the average monthly wage of a male worker in Tokyo, which is about US$4,500. In 2000, the government started paying the employer’s share as well as the employee’s share of social security contributions while the employee was on childcare leave. And in 2001, the Employment Insurance Law was amended to increase the proportion of salary received by an employee on childcare leave from 25 percent to 40 percent. In 2007, the proportion was increased again to 50 percent. In 2002, the government announced its “Plus One Plan”. Plus One means that the effort to raise marital fertility should be strengthened. The plan exhorted husbands to do more to help with child-rearing and housework in various ways. The plan also called for a “no queue” policy for day-care centers, implying further expansion of the number of day-care centers. In 2003, the parliament passed the “Next Generation” law, the intent of which was to implement the Plus One Plan. The law addressed the problem that many parents (mainly women) were not taking childcare leave because of social disapproval from co-workers and employers. The law therefore included measures aimed at creating an atmosphere within firms that would encourage parents to take the childcare leave to which they were entitled. To accomplish this, the law required employers with more than 300 employees to come up with a plan to raise fertility among their employees and to submit the plan to the government (i.e., to the prefectural Labour Bureau) by April 1 2005. Approval of the plan would allow the firm to obtain a stamp of approval in the form of a logo that could appear on its products and advertisements. Only 36 percent of employers submitted their plans on time, but the proportion with submitted plans increased rapidly to 97 percent by December 2005 and 100 percent by September 2006. So far, however, employers do not appear to be making much use of the logo, suggesting that they are not enthusiastic about the plans that they have been required to submit. The Next Generation law also requires local governments, as employers, to submit their own pro-natalist plans. In 2005 the government extended the right to childcare leave to part-time workers (i.e., persons employed for a fixed period of time), with some limitations

66 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura (Japan Institute of Workers’ Evolution, 2007). Part-time workers are eligible for children-care leave if both of the following criteria are met:

•• the worker has been employed by the employer for a continuous period of at least one year

•• the worker is likely to continue to be employed after the child reaches one


year of age.

Workers whose labor contracts expire during the year after the child reaches one year of age do not have the right to childcare leave when it is clear that the labor contract will not be renewed. A great many part-time workers are on three- or six-month renewable contracts, so they are not eligible for childcare leave unless the employer decides to renew the contract. Thus there is ample opportunity for employers to avoid granting childcare leave to part-time workers should employers wish to do so. As a substitute for the near-disappearance of arranged marriages, dating services have been playing an increasingly important role in the marriage market. So far, however, the government’s efforts to raise fertility have focused on measures aimed at increasing marital fertility rather than facilitating marriage, even though later marriage and less marriage account for about half of the decline in the TFR since 1973. All the big keiretsu (families of allied industries) already provide dating services for their employees. These services are contracted out to privatesector dating services firms, of which there are approximately 3,100 in Japan. It is likely that the plans submitted by the other employers covered by the Next Generation law often include subsidies for dating services, but so far we have no information on whether this is so. Despite all the government’s efforts to raise fertility, the TFR has continued to decline (Table 3.4). But without these measures, it probably would have declined even more. To understand why the TFR has not recovered, it is useful to begin by considering Japan in global context. To date, more than 30 countries around the world have experienced a TFR lower than 1.5 births per woman. Very few of these countries have been able to bring the TFR back up to 1.5, much less to the replacement level of 2.1. This lack of success has led Lutz et al. (2006) to hypothesize a “low-fertility trap”. Japan’s difficulties in reversing its TFR decline are not unusual. A possible reason why the Japanese government’s programs aimed at making it easier for women to both work and have children have not succeeded in reversing the downward trend in the TFR is that these programs have fertility reducing effects as well as fertility increasing effects. To see why this is so, it is useful to consider the effects of these programs on two groups of women:

•• those who work for pay outside the home •• those who do not work for pay outside the home. For simplicity, we shall refer to these two groups as workers and housewives.

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 67 The effect of the government’s pro-natalist programs is clearly to raise the fertility of workers. In the case of housewives, however, the effect is to pull some housewives into the labor force, thereby lowering their fertility inasmuch as working women have lower fertility than housewives. Which of these two effects predominates depends partly on:

•• the magnitude of pre-existing fertility differences between workers and Downloaded by [INFLIBNET Centre] at 05:43 01 December 2012

housewives

•• how much the fertility of working women rises as a result of the government’s policies and programs

•• the magnitude of the probability that a housewife will be pulled into the labor force as a result of the government’s policies and programs

•• the relative numbers of workers and housewives to begin with. If almost all women are already working, the overall effect will be to raise the TFR. If almost all women are housewives, the overall effect will be to lower the TFR. In Japan, there is still a great deal of potential for housewives to be pulled into the labor force. Only about half of currently married women work, and among those who work, about half work full-time and half work part-time. Figure 3.17 shows that, as late as 2004 among women age 20 and over (regardless of marital status), the proportion agreeing with the statement, “The husband should be the breadwinner, and the wife should stay at home,” was still as high as 41 percent for all women and 35 percent for women age 20−29, leaving considerable room for further declines in these percentages. Corresponding proportions for men were about ten percentage points higher. It appears that most of the women who are currently not working prefer to be full-time housewives. Figure 3.18 shows additionally that, as late as 2003, the proportion of currently married women who gave birth in that year and took childcare leave was only about 20 percent. There is also considerable room for increase in this percentage. Figure 3.18 also shows that the proportion of women who were working before they gave birth rose somewhat after 2001 but by 2003 was still lower than it was in 1992. It also shows that the proportion of workers for whom childcare was not available has changed little since 1998. Another striking finding in this figure is that the 1991 Childcare Leave Act of 1991 and subsequent revisions of it seem to have had little effect on the proportion of women who take childcare leave. Indeed, the proportion taking childcare leave was only slightly higher after 1992 than it was between 1989 and 1992, when evidently many employers were already offering childcare leave before the government mandated them to do so. On the whole, Figure 3.18 indicates that the government’s efforts to make it easier for women to both work and have children have not had much effect on the proportion who work. If this is indeed true, then the effect of the government’s programs to make it easier for women to both work and rear children has probably been to raise fertility (i.e., to slow the decline in fertility). One must be careful in interpreting the trends in Figure 3.18, however, because the group of women considered in each year is increasingly truncated by age as

90 80 Men total

Percent

Men 20–29 Women total

60 50 40

Women 20–29 30 1972

1979

1992

1997

2002

2004

Year

Figure 3.17 Proportion who agree that husband should be breadwinner, wife should stay at home. Source: National Survey of Gender Equality and National Survey on Women, various rounds (from the published reports).

1.0 0.8 Proportion


70

0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 1980

1983

1986

1989

1992

1995

1998

2001

Year of child-bearing Used

Did not use

Scheme not available

Not working

Figure 3.18 Trends in the proportion of married women of reproductive age who took advantage of childcare leave, by year of child’s birth, 1980–2003. Note Computed from data from the 2004 National Survey of Population, Families and Generations.


Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 69 one goes back in time from the 2004 survey, which sampled women only up to age 50. This means, for example, that the maximum age of a woman was 36 in 1990 and only 26 in 1980. Another difficulty is that the figure pertains to all currently married women. It would also be of interest to graph the trend in the proportions taking childcare leave for currently married full-time workers and currently married part-time workers separately, but this is not possible using the 2004 survey. Another complication is that many women who take childcare leave take it more than once, so that the proportion of women who are covered is less than the proportion of their children who are covered, as shown by the following additional information from the 2004 survey on which Figure 3.18 is based. There were 1,604 first births in the birth histories collected in this survey – 15 percent of the mothers of these first births took childcare leave, and of these mothers, 55 percent also took childcare leave for a second birth by the time of the survey. These “repeaters” tended to have above-average education and to work full-time for either large corporations or government. The picture that emerges is that the women who take advantage of childcare leave are a rather select group. An apparent additional effect of more generous childcare-leave provisions since 2001 has been to decrease the proportion of currently married women who work full-time and increase the proportion who work part-time, as shown in Figure 3.19. This is contrary to the expectation that more generous childcareleave provisions, which in Japan until very recently have applied exclusively to full-time workers, would draw more women into full-time work. Increasingly generous childcare-leave provisions probably have caused many women who were already working full-time to continue on the job (while on childcare leave) instead of quitting shortly before childbirth. But it also appears from Figure 3.19 that the additional burden on employers has made employers more likely to hire new women workers as part-time workers instead of full-time workers. Many married part-time workers would prefer to have full-time jobs, and their fertility may be lower than what it would have been had they actually been able to get full-time jobs. Overall, the evidence, which is far from conclusive, suggests that the effect of the government’s efforts to make it easier for women to both work and have children (including not only increasingly generous childcare leave but also the major expansion of government-subsidized day-care facilities throughout the country) has been to slow the decline of marital fertility. Indeed, the TMFR has leveled off in recent years (Figure 3.1), with most of the continuing decline in the TFR a result of later marriage and less marriage.

Concluding remarks The danger of placing too much of the burden of pro-natalist programs on business is that it may reduce the competitiveness of Japanese firms in global markets and slow Japan’s economic recovery. Economic recovery, however, is essential for maintaining the government’s capacity to fund pro-natalist programs, which, if they are to be effective, are very expensive. Large tax deductions for children that

70 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura 40 35 Part-time

Proportion


30 25 Full-time

20 15 10 5 0 1979

1984

1989

1994

1999

2004

Year

Figure 3.19 Among currently married women below age 50, trends in the proportions working full-time and part-time.

spread the burden more evenly across the population might be a more economically efficient way to promote higher fertility, although some of the burden will inevitably fall directly on employers. As Retherford and Ogawa (2006) have noted, the big picture is that the government must:

•• restructure the economy so that Japan can restore the health of its economy and compete more effectively in the global economy

•• restructure society to make it more marriage-friendly and family-friendly in order to raise fertility.

The trick is accomplishing the second task without jeopardizing the first, and without jeopardizing women’s hard-won gains in education and employment. As Japan’s experience since 1990 amply demonstrates, this will be both difficult and expensive.

Acknowledgements Research for this paper was funded by two grants from the National Institute of Health, NIA R01-AG025488 and AG025247. This work was also supported by a grant obtained by the Nihon University Population Research Institute from the “Academic Frontier” Project for Private Universities: matching fund subsidy from MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), 2006–2010.

Japan’s declining fertility and policy responses 71


References AIU Insurance Company. 2001. Cost of Children. Tokyo: AIU Insurance Company (in Japanese). Allison, P. 1995. Survival Analysis Using SAS: A Practical Guide. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc. Bongaarts, J., and G. Feeney. 1998. “On the quantum and tempo of fertility,” Population and Development Review 24: 271−291. Cabinet Office. 2005. White Paper on the National Life Style. Tokyo: Government of Japan (in Japanese). Clark, R. and N. Ogawa. 1997. “Transition from career jobs to retirement in Japan,” Industrial Relations 36: 255−270. Feeney, G. 1986. “Period parity progression measures of fertility in Japan,” NUPRI Research Paper Series no. 35. Tokyo: Nihon University Population Research Institute. Feeney, G. and Y. Saito. 1985. “Progression to first marriage in Japan: 1870–1980,” NUPRI Research Paper Series no. 24. Tokyo: Nihon University Population Research Institute. Japan Institute of Workers’ Evolution. 2007. Law concerning the welfare of workers who take care of children or other family members, including child care and family care leave. Downloaded from the Institute’s website on February 16, 2007: http://www.jiwe. or.jp/english/law/law4_1_2.html. Japanese Association for Sex Education. 2001. Sexual Behavior of Youth. Tokyo: Shogakukan (in Japanese). Kohler, H.P., F.C. Billari, and J.A. Ortega. 2002. “The emergence of lowest-low fertility in Europe during the 1990s,” Population and Development Review 28: 641−680. Lutz, W., V. Skirbekk, and M. Testa. 2006. “The low fertility trap hypothesis: forces that may lead to further postponement and fewer births in Europe,” in D. Philipov, A.C. Liefboer, and F.C. Billari (eds), Vienna Yearbook of Population Research. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. McDonald, P. 2005. “Low fertility in Singapore: causes, consequences and policies,” paper presented at the Forum on Population and Development in East Asia, Beijing, May 16−17. Mason, A. and N. Ogawa. 2001. “Population, labor force, saving and Japan’s future,” in M. Bloomstrom, B. Gangnes, and S. Lacroix (eds), Japan’s New Economy: Continuity and Change in the Twenty First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Various years. Survey on Employment Management. Tokyo: Government of Japan (in Japanese). NIPSSR (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research). 2003. Child Related Policies in Japan. Tokyo: NIPSSR. Ogawa, N. 2003. “Japan’s changing fertility mechanisms and its policy responses,” Journal of Population Research 20: 89−106. —— 2005. “Population aging and policy options for a sustainable future: the case of Japan,” Genus 61: 369−410. Ogawa, N. and J. Ermisch. 1994. “Women’s career development and divorce risk in Japan,” Labour 8: 193−219. Ogawa, N. and R.D. Retherford. 1997. “Shifting costs of caring for the elderly back to families in Japan: will it work?,” Population and Development Review 23: 59–94. Retherford, R.D. and N. Ogawa. 2006. “Japan’s baby bust: causes, implications, and policy responses,” in F.R. Harris (ed.), The Baby Bust: Who Will Do the Work? Who Will Pay the


72 Naohiro Ogawa, Robert D. Retherford, and Rikiya Matsukura Taxes? Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: pp.5–44. A pre-publication version is downloadable at http://www.eastwestcenter.org/stored/pdfs/POPwp118.pdf. Retherford, R.D., N. Ogawa, and R. Matsukura. 2001. “Late marriage and less marriage in Japan,” Population and Development Review 27: 65–102. Retherford, R.D., Naohiro Ogawa, and Satomi Sakamoto. 1996. “Values and fertility change in Japan,” Population Studies 50: 5–25. Statistics Bureau. Various years. Annual Report of the Labour Force Survey. Tokyo: Statistics Bureau, Government of Japan. Tsuya, Noriko O., and Larry L. Bumpass. 2004. Marriage, Work and Family Life in Comparative Perspective: Japan, South Korea and the United States. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. United Nations. 1995. Women’s Education and Fertility Behaviour: Recent Evidence from the Demographic and Health Surveys. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations. 2005. World Population Projection: the 2004 Revision. New York, NY: United Nations. U.S. Census Bureau. 2006. World POPclock Projection. Downloaded from website on December 14, 2006: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html. Van de Kaa, D. 2006. “Temporarily new: on low fertility and the prospect of pro-natal policies,” revised version of a paper presented at the conference on the Postponement of Childbearing in Europe, Vienna Institute of Demography, December 1−3, 2005. Yamada, M. 1996. The Sociology of Marriage: Will Marriage Continue to Be Delayed? Tokyo: Maruzen Library (in Japanese). —— 2001. “Parasite singles feed on family system,” Japan Quarterly, March−April: 10−16. —— 2004. “Consciousness of Risk Involved in Childrearing in the Context of Lifetime Planning Among Young Adults,” report submitted to Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare (in Japanese). Downloadable at http:/mhlw-grants.niph.go.jp/niph/search/ NISR00.do. —— 2006. “The real story behind Japan’s marriage crisis,” Japan Echo, February: 20−24.

4

The arrival of low fertility in China


Baochang Gu

Introduction The demographic profile of China has often been seen as that of the most populous country in the world, with traditionally high fertility, rapidly growing, mainly rural population, and a young age structure. But suddenly it is found that such a description is no longer true. Fertility has dropped to below replacement level, and the population is rapidly aging, sex unbalance among the new-born has been an issue for more than two decades, and the volume of internal migration has become the largest in world history during peace time. China will soon lose its position as the world’s most populous country to India. Demographic transformation in China has been so swift that it is necessary to update our understanding of population dynamics in China, particularly with the arrival of low fertility. This chapter will first provide a review of fertility trends and fertility policy in China followed by an explanation of low fertility based on the evidence from an on-going survey in Jiangsu province. The impact of low fertility with respect to population aging, gender equality, sex ratio at birth and labor supply will then be presented, and the chapter will end with a discussion suggesting that more work needs to be done to understand the population dynamics along with the arrival of low fertility in China.

Low fertility and population growth China’s population policy and program have, for decades, been focused almost exclusively on demographic outcomes given the overriding concern of the government and society alike with the impact of the excessive growth of the population on socioeconomic development. Since the 1990 census reported a TFR of 2.31, the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS) has been reporting that China’s fertility has fallen to a level below replacement, and the 2000 census even reported a TFR way below replacement (1.4). Despite the historical transition of reproduction from a typical high-fertility to a typical low-fertility pattern in half a century (Chen and Guo 2006), it was still argued that “while its fertility has declined to below replacement at the level of 1.8, the annual births remain at 20 million and population increment at 10 million. … The demographic profile of China is


74 Baochang Gu characterized by low fertility level with rapid population growth” (Gu 2003). It was even predicted that the number of annual births would remain at 20 million and population increment at 10 million. Nevertheless, this assertion has been questioned in recent years. Table 4.1 is compiled from data published by the NBS with results from the annual population- change sample surveys and the 2005 1 percent national-population sample survey. It shows that while the total population has continued to increase since 2000, the annual growth of the population has been decreasing, from more than 9.5 million in 2000 to less than 7 million in 2006. The declining trend is quite remarkable. The number of deaths has remained virtually unchanged at an annual level of more than 8 million, while the crude birth rate and the number of births have both been decreasing over the years. The birth rate has declined from 14 per thousand in 2000 to 12.1 per thousand in 2006, and the number of births has declined from close to 18 million to less than 16 million, a decrement of about 2 million in 7 years. As a result, the population growth rate has declined to below 0.6 percent. In fact all the 31 provinces of the country have a population growth rate below 1 percent except for the three remote provinces of Tibet (1.12%), Ningxia (1.12%), and Xinjiang (1.09%). It is therefore no longer tenable for China to claim to be a country with “rapid population growth”. The slowing trend of population growth in China can also be seen from the predictions for the timing of the arrival of peak population and the population size at the peak. A decade ago, it was widely accepted that China would not achieve zero population growth until the mid-twenty-first century with a peak population of 1.6 billion; by the turn of the century, the prediction was brought forward to the 2040s with a population of 1.5 billion. The growing consensus has recently switched to the early 2030s with a population of less than 1.5 billion. The most updated projection from the United Nations suggests that China’s population will reach a peak in 2030 with a population of 1.458 billion, while India will have a population of 1.506 billion, surpassing China as the most populous country in the world (United Nations 2007). Table 4.1 Population changes in China, 2000–2006 Year Year-end Total Crude Birth Births Crude Deaths Natural Population Population Rate (‰) (million) Death (million) Growth Growth (million) Rate (‰) Rate (%) (million) 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006

1267.43 1276.27 1284.53 1292.27 1299.88 1307.56 1314.48

14.03 13.38 12.86 12.41 12.29 12.40 12.09

Sources: NBS 2005, 2006, 2007.

17.71 17.02 16.47 15.99 15.93 16.18 15.84

6.45 6.43 6.41 6.40 6.42 6.51 6.81

8.14 8.18 8.21 8.25 8.32 8.49 8.92

0.758 0.695 0.645 0.601 0.587 0.589 0.528

9.57 8.84 8.26 7.74 7.61 7.69 6.92


The arrival of low fertility in China 75 China has not always been a country with rapid population growth. Over its long history, the population grew quite slowly due to the fact that the high birth rate was compensated for by a high death rate. Rapid population growth was not seen until the seventeeth century when mortality started to decline while fertility remained at a high level (Poston et al. 2005). This pattern is consistent with what is suggested by the demographic transition theory. Rapid population growth is a one-time phenomenon over the course of human history, and is now coming to an end after dominating China’s population dynamics for several hundred years. The total fertility rate (TFR) has commonly been used as an indicator of the fertility level of a given population. China’s measurement of its fertility was claimed to be “of very high quality” in the early 1980s (Coale 1984), but has become a controversial issue over the years, particularly since the mid-1990s. It was anticipated that the results of the 2000 population census would provide an answer to the debate. Surprisingly, the 2000 census initially reported a fertility level of only 1.22.1 This result has been widely considered “unacceptable,” and even the NBS sees it as “too low”. More debates have arisen on China’s fertility level in recent years, and the estimation ranges from as low as 1.35 to as high as 2.3 (Chen and Guo 2006). Several studies employing various methods have argued that China’s TFR was “between 1.5 and 1.6” in the year 2000 (Guo 2004; Cai 2005; Retherford et al. 2005; Zhang and Zhao 2006), while the official figure is insisted to be “about 1.7 to 1.8” (Chen and Guo 2006). Despite the ongoing debate, the NBS continues to publish the detailed fertility information by age and parity every year based on the results from the annual population-change sample surveys. The age-specific fertility rates and total fertility rate in China for 2000–2005 are shown in Table 4.2, which reveals a quite consistent trend with China’s fertility at the level of around 1.4 in the early twenty-first century. Whatever the method and data source used to determine China’s current fertility level, one thing is hardly refutable: China’s fertility has truly fallen below the replacement level of 2.1. We should be able to conclude that China’s fertility transition has definitely reached the stage of low fertility (see Figure 4.1). Table 4.2 Age-specific fertility rates and total fertility rate in China, 2000–2005 Age-specific Fertility Rate (‰)

Year 2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49

5.96 114.49 86.19 28.62 6.22 1.46 0.68

2.70 107.70 115.37 40.06 9.22 1.83 0.60

2.68 113.15 106.09 42.68 9.68 1.88 0.37

5.25 122.67 102.44 38.28 8.65 1.77 0.56

5.56 120.85 107.60 42.21 10.14 1.93 0.41

6.34 114.46 91.70 40.22 10.98 2.05 0.77

1.22

1.39

1.38

1.40

1.44

1.33

TFR

Sources: 2000: 2000 population census, 2001–2005: annual population-change sample surveys.

76 Baochang Gu 8.00 7.00 6.00 5.00

TFR

4.00 3.00


2.00 1.00 0.00 1950

1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 Year

Figure 4.1 Total fertility rate in China, 1950–2005. Source: NBS, 2005.

Low fertility and fertility policy2 To understand the appearance of low fertility in China we need to discuss the fertility policy implemented in the family planning program. It is well known that China’s fertility decline and its population control have relied heavily on a draconian fertility policy and a strong family planning program. As a result, China’s national fertility policy has often been known mostly as a “one-child policy”. Yet it is little understood that China’s fertility policy, while a national priority for over two decades, has evolved to contain highly localized features. Following modifications over two decades to the initial one-child policy, what is the desired or expected fertility level as implied by these policies for each of China’s provinces and for China as a whole? To quantify fertility policies in various localities and populations across the country, the term policy fertility is coined as a quantitative indicator summarizing the fertility level implied by the fertility policies implemented in a given region. Fertility policy in China can be grouped into four categories: 1 2 3 4

1-child policy (1 child per couple) 1.5-children policy (those whose first child is a girl may have a second child) 2-children policy (2 children per couple) 3-children policy (3 children per couple).

Map 4.1 highlights the geographic diversity of fertility policy measured by policy fertility for China’s prefectures, an administrative level between county and province. Tibet is not included in the calculation and mapping due to lack of data on fertility policy at the sub-provincial level. For the sake of simplicity, policy fertility is grouped into four categories:

Tibet

Jinchang City

no data

1.3–1.5

Panzhihua City

Lanzhou City

Baiyin City

Shenzhen City

Wuhai City

Langfang City

Beijing City Shenyang City Fushun City

Changde, Hunan

Wuhan City

Shanghai City

Taiyuan City

Tianjin City

Guangzhou City

Taiwan

Map 4.1 Geographic distribution of policy fertility, prefecture level, China, late 1990s

1.5–2.0

2.0–3.5

1.0–1.3

Chongqing City

Ganze Zang Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Sichuan

Aba Zang-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan

Haixi Mongol-Zang Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai

Urumqi City

Jiayuguan City

Da Hinggan Ling Prefecture, Heilongjiang


78 Baochang Gu 1 2


3 4

1.0–1.3, corresponding with regions with a predominantly 1-child policy 1.3–1.5, corresponding to areas with a mixture of 1-child and 1.5-children policies 1.5–2.0, corresponding to areas with 1.5- and 2-children policies 2 or higher, for areas with a 2- or more-children policy.

The four shades of the map represent different levels of policy fertility, from the lowest (1.0–

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