Regional Patterns and Correlates in Recent Family Formation in Japan

Miho Iwasawa, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Tokyo
Kenji Kamata, Meiji University
Ryuichi Kaneko, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Japan
Kimiko Tanaka, University of Wisconsin at Madison

Although fertility is very in low in Japan and Italy, unmarried cohabitation and divorce have been increasing and the decline in fertility has come to a halt in both countries. In Italy, these new marital and reproductive behaviors are more prominent in Central-North areas, which are highly correlated with features of the so-called Second Demographic Transition. In this paper, we first use prefecture (state) data from Japan to describe regional variations and patterns in multiple aspects of marital and reproductive behavior, as well as socio-economic characteristics and attitudinal measures. We then examine which prefecture-level variables are associated with the recent recovery of fertility using a spatially correlated error model. The results suggest that recent fertility recovery is not strongly associated with the SDT feature as observed in Italy, but the spatially correlated error extracted may suggest that there is some other unobserved feature(s) affecting fertility behavior.