Japan: Informing people about current family policies boosts marriage intentions
A 2022 study (Family Policy Awareness and Marital Intentions: A National Survey Experimental Study by Shun Gong and Senhu Wang) finds that most young unmarried people in Japan are unaware of government policies designed to promote marriage and birth rates, but when informed about the benefits, they express significantly higher intentions to get married, especially among certain subgroups.
Why it matters: Japan has seen marriage and birth rates plummet in recent decades, posing serious economic and social challenges. The findings suggest raising awareness of supportive family policies could be a powerful but underutilized tool to encourage family formation.
By the numbers:
Before being informed, over 61% of unmarried Japanese aged 20-39 surveyed knew about none of the 17 marriage and fertility benefits like spousal tax deductions, pension and health insurance perks. Only 1.58% knew about all 17.
Those informed about the policies were 1.25 times more likely to express strong marriage intentions compared to the uninformed control group.
The positive effects were especially pronounced for university-educated women (odds ratio 1.40) and both low-educated (odds ratio 1.35) and high-educated men (odds ratio 1.25).
Effects did not significantly differ between men and women overall.
The big picture: Japan exemplifies the "lowest-low" fertility seen across developed East Asia. The researchers say traditional gender norms expecting breadwinning from men and caregiving from women make highly-educated women and low-earning men particularly vulnerable to high perceived costs of marriage.
Women with degrees face high opportunity costs like forgone wages and career advancement to fulfill domestic roles.
Low-educated men struggle to meet expectations of financial providing.
Policies offsetting these costs make the biggest impact for them.
How they did it: The researchers conducted a survey experiment with 6,544 unmarried Japanese aged 20-39. Half were randomly assigned to read descriptions of 5 existing spousal benefit policies (e.g. tax breaks) and 12 fertility support policies (e.g. childcare leave) before being asked about marriage intentions. The other half were asked without seeing policy details.
Yes, but: The experiment tested the combined effects of all policies together. Future work should examine which specific policies matter most for whom. The study also only measured marriage intentions, not actual marriage rates.
What it means: The results challenge the common research assumption that people are fully aware of policies when making family decisions. Actively promoting benefits could significantly boost policy impacts, but may require customization to meet different subgroups' needs.
The bottom line: Raising policy awareness may be a promising avenue to support family formation, but impacts are likely to vary based on how policies interact with deep-seated gender and class norms. Targeting information to specific subgroups and "bundling" policies with efforts to promote gender equity could help optimize their reach and effectiveness.