• Setsuya Fukuda Senior Researcher, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

• Daiji Kawaguchi Professor, Graduate School of Public Policy, The University of Tokyo

A recent study shows that the negative educational gradient in women’s marriage in Japan has been reversed since 2005 and turned positive around 2013. The shift in educational gradient is brought by a decline in the marriage rates of homogamous marriages among less-educated women and an increase in the marriage rates of hypogamous marriages among highly educated women. While the consequences of this shift are important in understanding the mechanism of social inequalities in Japan, no systematic study has been conducted yet. By using nationally representative survey data, this study shows first descriptive results on how 1) the process of marriage, 2) economic and domestic role sharing, 3) family and gender values, 4) couple relationship and 5) fertility desire/outcome differ by educational pairings among Japanese married couples, and evaluates possible outcomes of the emerging new marriage pattern in Japan.

Setsuya Fukuda is a Researcher at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, where he conducts demographic research on the inter-relationships between gender, family formation, and family policy. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Meiji University. After his graduate study, he worked as a researcher at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany in 2008-2011. His current research focuses on gender role division, educational assortative mating, fertility, and intergenerational transfers in international comparative settings, looking, particularly, how Japan’s gender structure and intergenerational relations are going to change in relation to population decline and new family policies.