On 1st June, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare once again announced that the total fertility rate (TFR) in Japan had reached a record low, the fifth year in a row. The figure for 2005 was 1.25, a drop from 1.29, and means that Japanese women between the ages of 15 and 49 will give birth to an average of 1.25 babies. Simply to maintain the current population levels TFR would have to rise to 2.07.

In 2002, the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR) estimated that TFR would fall to 1.3 in 2005 before rising. The latest figure has caused Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to state that measures to cope with the declining number of children would be priority issue.

The government and ruling coalition are planning policies to tackle the declining birth rate as it will lead to higher social welfare costs and lower economic growth. However, tighter current budget constraints means there is a limit to the amount of financial support that can be given to new measures.

Even if the government introduces new measures, there is little guarantee of success as previous efforts have yielded few results. For example, in companies that provide childcare, about 70% of women leave the workplace on becoming a mother.

Not only are women getting married later, if at all, but also those who do marry are bearing children later as well. In 2005, 714,261 couples married, down by over 6,000 from the year before. The average age of marriage for women in that year was 28.0, up from 27.8 in 2004, and the average age of giving birth was 29.1, up from 28.9.

Husbands a key?

A study conducted by NIPSSR in 2003 showed that married couples are willing to have more children, but only if husbands play a greater role in bringing them up. The study showed that Japanese women are responsible for more than 80 percent of child-rearing duties.

Where couples have one child, women whose husbands have little involvement would like have an average of 0.8 more children, while those with significant commitment by the husband want 1.04 more children, the institute said.

Regarding domestic chores, the institute found that one in four women with full-time work spends more than four hours on domestic duties, even on weekdays, and 20 % of these women's husbands share none of the chores.