Society Japan leading in childless women around 50

1. Japan (27%)
2. Finland (20.7%)
3. Austria
4. Spain

Rie Moriizumi, senior researcher at IPSS, found that women remain childless due to difficulty in getting married, a preference not to have children, because they are putting off having children, or due to infertility or health reasons. The findings are based on survey responses collected by the institute. In recent years, the share of Japanese women remaining childless due to problems getting married has jumped, becoming the top reason among women between the ages of 25 to 49. It appears that one major hurdle to marriage is finding a suitable partner with adequate financial resources. Women who prefer not to have kids make up the second-biggest contingent among childless women. Moriizumi estimates that about 5% of all women have made that choice, and the numbers have especially grown among younger generations. Unmarried women are more likely to decide against having children if they have low incomes or have not found a partner. "This suggests that more women have given up rather than actively choosing" not to have children, said Moriizumi.

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Though more women entered the workforce, a lack of measures to help balance work and family forced many to choose between leaving their jobs to raise a family or forgoing children to continue their careers, leading to a decline in births. "As women stopped making marrying and raising children their top priorities in order to develop their careers, marriage and childbirth were increasingly deferred, and more people had no children," said Toshihiko Hara, professor emeritus at Sapporo City University, who has studied childlessness in Germany and Japan. Some experts warn that the rise in childlessness could fray Japan's social fabric. [...] Tokyo Metropolitan University professor Aya Abe conducted quantitative research to show that having no children often leads to an insufficient social support network.

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