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EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND THE TRANSITION TO

FIRST MARRIAGE AMONG JAPANESE WOMEN*

JAMES M. RAYMO

I use data from a large nationally representative survey to examine the relationship betiveen
women a educationalattainment and the timing offirst marriagein Japan. The results indicate that
later marriagefor highly educated women primarily reflects longer enrollment in school, that uni-
versity education is increasingly associatedwith later and less marriage, and that the trend towvard
later and less marriage is occurringat all levels of educational attainment.These findings are con-
sistent, albeit weakly, with the argument that higher education should be negatively associatedwith
marriage only in countries in which gender relations make it particularly dificult for women to
I balancework andfamily

n studies of women's transition to first marriage, educational attainment has long been
used as an indicator of economic resources (e.g., Preston and Richards 1975; Sweeney
2002; Thornton, Axinn, and Teachman 1995). In recent work, this use of educational at-
tainment as a proxy for economic resources has played an important role in the evaluation
of alternative theoretical explanations for trends in the timing of first marriage in the
United States and other industrialized countries. Specifically, it has been argued that a
careful evaluation of whether women's higher educational attainment is associated pri-
marily with later marriage or with less marriage may provide some empirical leverage in
distinguishing between theoretical explanations that emphasize reductions in the gains to
marriage and those that emphasize increasing economic uncertainty at young ages. On
the one hand, evidence that higher education is associated with an increased likelihood of
never marrying may be consistent with reductions in the gains to marriage that prompt
economically independent women to "buy out" of marriage. On the other hand, evidence
that higher education is associated with later, but not necessarily less, marriage may be
more consistent with a scenario in which the spouse-search process becomes longer as
men's and women's economic roles become more similar. Because future earnings pros-
pects are much more uncertain at young ages than are characteristics such as appearance,
personality, and family background, an iricrease in the importance of women's economic
prospects as a spouse-selection criterion may contribute to later marriage by decreasing
the certainty with which the relevant characteristics of potential spouses can be evaluated
(Oppenheimer 1988, 1994, 1997).
Empirical evidence from analyses of U.S. data, however, does not provide strong
support for either of these explanations. In fact, most studies of individual-level data have
found that, net of the marriage-delaying effect of school enrollment, educational attain-
ment is either positively or not significantly associated with the risk of first marriage for
women (e.g., Lichter et al. 1992; Oppenheimer and Lew 1995; Sweeney 2002; Thornton et
al. 1995). An intriguing framework for understanding this general pattern of findings for
women in the United States is provided by Blossfeld's (1995a) interpretation of results

*James M. Raymo, Department of Sociology, 1180 Observatory Drive, University of Wisconsin, Madison,
WI 53706; E-mail: jraymo@ssc.wisc.edu. I would like to thank Makoto Atoh and the National Insitute of Popu-
lation and Social Security Research for generously providing data from the 10th National Fertility Survey. I
would also like to thank Pam Smock, Arland Thomton, Robert J. Willis, Yu Xie, and three anonymous reviewers
for their helpful comments on early drafts of this article.

Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003: 83-103 83


84 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003

from parallel analyses of marriage in seven industrialized countries. In these studies, the
relationship between educational attainment and the risk of marriage for women was found
to be insignificant or positive in societies with the least "traditional" family systems (Swe-
den, West Germany, Hungary, and the United States), weakly negative in societies with a
somewhat more asymmetric gender division of labor (France and the Netherlands), and
clearly negative only in the least gender-egalitarian country in the study (Italy). These
results led Blossfeld (1995a) to suggest that the economic opportunities proxied by higher
educational attainment are associated with a lower risk of marriage only in societies in
which sharply differentiated gender roles make it difficult for women to combine work and
family. Although this conclusion is both provocative and intuitively appealing, it is based
on one exceptional case in one comparative study. Clearly, more evidence is needed to
justify the conclusion that highly differentiated gender roles are an important contextual
condition for a negative relationship between women's economic resources (as proxied by
educational attainment) and the risk of marriage.
In this article, I provide additional evidence by examining the relationship between
educational attainment and the timing of first marriage among Japanese women.' Japan
has not only experienced rapid changes in both educational attainment and the timing of
marriage (Raymo 1998; Retherford, Ogawa, and Matsukura 2001; Tsuya and Mason 1995)
but is also arguably the most gender-inegalitarian industrialized country (Brinton 1993;
Tsuya and Mason 1995), making it an ideal case for evaluating the general applicability of
Blossfeld's (1995a) conclusion. The trends toward increasing educational attainment and
later marriage among Japanese women are immediately clear from Table 1. Between 1970
and 2000, the proportion of female high school graduates proceeding to institutions of
higher education five years earlier (upper panel) increased fourfold (from .12 to .48).2 In
recent years, the increase in the proportion of women who have entered four-year univer-
sities, which provide the greatest labor market advantages (Ishida 1998), has been particu-
larly rapid. During this same period, the mean age at first marriage increased from 24.2 to
27.0. Changes in the age-specific likelihood of being unmarried (lower panel) were even
more striking, particularly between ages 25 and 34. For example, whereas only one in five
women aged 25-29 in 1970 had yet to marry, over half the similarly aged women in 2000
had never married. Furthermore, a comparison of the proportion unmarried at age 30-34 in
1970 (.07) with the proportion of the same cohort unmarried at age 40-44 in 1980 (.04)
indicates that, in 1970, nearly all women who would ever marry did so by their early 30s.
By 2000, however, the proportion of 30- to 34-year-old women who had yet to marry had
nearly quadrupled to .26, indicating not only that women are marrying later but also that
the proportion who never marry may increase substantially. Indeed, official population
projections are based on the assumption that the proportion of women who never marry
will increase from the low levels of .04-.05 for women who were born before 1950 (i.e.,
45- to 49-year-old women in Table 1) to .17 for women who were born after 1985.3 The
implications of the trend toward later and less marriage are particularly important in Japan,
where family alternatives to marriage (e.g., cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing) re-
main limited; where opportunities for promotion and career development are unavailable
1. This focus on economic resources should not obscure the fact that educational attainment may also
reflect other important correlates of the timing of marriage, such as attitudes and marriage-market opportunities
(e.g., Qian and Preston 1993). See Sorensen (1995) for a critique of the use of educational attainment as a proxy
for women's economic resources.
2. In an attempt to represent the educational attainment of recent entrants into the marriage market, figures
for educational continuation rates refer to the previous census year (i.e., five years earlier). Because few women
fail to finish high school, these figures closely approximate the proportion of all women who received some
postsecondary education.
3. This is the assumption used in making the medium-variant population projections. The proportion of
women assumed never to marry is .13 in the high-fertility projections and .23 in the low-fertility projections
(National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (NIPSSR) 2002:6-7).
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 85

Table 1. Rates of Continuation to Higher Education, Mean Age at Marriage, and Age-Specific
Proportions Never Married, 1970-2000

Census Year
Measure 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Proportion of High School
Graduates Entering Junior
Colleges 5 Years Earlier .07 .11 .20 .21 .21 .22 .25
Proportion of High School
Graduates Entering 4-Year
Colleges 5 Years Earlier .05 .07 .13 .12 .14 .15 .23
Mean Age at First Marriage 24.2 24.7 25.2 25.5' 25.9 26.3 27.0
Proportion Never Married,
byAge Group
15-19 .98 .99 .99 .99 .99 .99 .99
20-24 .72 .69 .78 .82 .86 .87 .88
25-29 .18 .21 .24 .31 '.40 .48 .54
30-34 .07 .08 .09 .10 .14 .20 .26
35-39 .06 .05 .06 .07 .08 .10 .14
40-44 .05 .05 .04 .05 .06 .07 .09
45-49 .04 .05 .04 .04 .05 .06 .06
Sourcer: Basic Survey of Schools (Ministy of Education, -variousyears),Vital Statistics ofJapan (Ministry of Health and
Welfare, various years), and Population Census ofJapan (Statistics Bureau-Management and Coordination Agency, various
years).

to most women; and, perhaps most important, where families play a central role in the
provision of care and support at older ages.
As in the United States, much of the scholarly discussion and research on this trend
toward later (and presumably less) marriage in Japan has stressed the importance of in-
creasing educational attainment as an indicator of women's expanding economic opportu-
nities (e.g., Osawa 1993; Osawa and Komamura 1994; Yashiro 1993). Some Japanese
scholars have also argued that changes in women's educational attainment are important
for understanding changes in the timing of marriage precisely because economic opportu-
nities for women have expanded rapidly while men's and women's roles within the fam-
ily have remained highly asymmetric (Osawa and Komamura 1994; Tsuya and Mason
1995). Although this argument accords with Blossfeld's (1995a) general conclusion, it is
important to consider the empirical basis for the implicit assumption upon which it rests,
that is, that higher education is a good proxy for Japanese women's economic opportuni-
ties. Empirical evidence from research on the determinants of women's wages is ambigu-
ous, with one study finding no relationship between education and starting wages among
full-time employees (Brinton 1993) and others finding that university education is associ-
ated with substantially higher wages (Ogawa and Clark 1995; Ogawa and Ermisch 1996).
Evidence for a substantial return to higher education also may be found by using data
from the Basic Survey of Wage Structure (BSWS) to construct education-specific age-
wage profiles. These synthetic cohort measures show that higher education, especially a
four-year university degree, is associated with markedly higher earnings across the life
course (figures not presented). In fact, the returns to a four-year degree (measured as the
ratio of monthly wages for university graduates to those of high school graduates) are
higher for women than for men. At the same time, the association between higher educa-
tional attainment and entry into large firms (which typically offei higher wages) has been
86 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003

shown to be weaker for women than for men (Brinton 1993; Ishida 1998). This is particu-
larly true for junior college degrees. Furthermore, it is clear that even if there are substan-
tial economic returns to a university degree, highly educated women earn far less than
similarly educated men. In fact, data from the 2000 BSWS show that, until relatively
older ages (50 and older), the age-wage profile for women with a university degree is
similar to that of men with a high school degree.
The ambiguity of this evidence regarding the relationship between educational attain-
ment and Japanese women's economic opportunities is reflected in alternative interpreta-
tions of the relationship between educational attainment and marriage. Osawa and
Komamura (1994), for example, suggested that the extreme difficulty women face in com-
bining career and family makes the opportunity costs of marriage particularly high for
university graduates, given the positive correlation between education and both wages and
employment in rewarding jobs. This argument implies that the likelihood of never marry-
ing should be higher among highly educated women. Alternatively, Tsuya and Mason
(1995) noted that although well-educated Japanese women do not appear to be rejecting
the idea of marriage and a primarily domestic role for themselves, they are increasingly
desirous of more egalitarian marriages. They argued that with little evidence of a corre-
sponding shift in men's attitudes, these women are "reluctant to enter marriage before
enjoying a period of relative autonomy and freedom from domestic burdens" (Tsuya and
Mason 1995:162).
METHODOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS OF EXISTING RESEARCH
The relationship between women's educational attainment and the timing of marriage in
Japan remains poorly understood, however. Although analyses of individual-level cross-
sectional data have consistently shown educational attainment to be negatively associ-
ated with the risk of marriage for women (e.g., Kaneko 1991, 1994; Kojima 1994a,
1994b, 1995; Otani 1991, 1993), three important methodological limitations make it dif-
ficult to draw substantively meaningful conclusions from this finding. The first limita-
tion is the failure to separate the effects of school enrollment and educational attainment.
Estimating only the net effect of educational attainment precludes the possibility of dis-
tinguishing the effect of later entry into the marriage market from other factors (e.g.,
greater economic resources) that may lead more highly educated women to marry later
than their less-educated counterparts. This is a particularly important limitation for
analyses of marriage in Japan, where enrollment in school is a near-perfect predictor of
nonmarriage (e.g., Brinton 1992). The rarity of students' marriages in Japan presumably
reflects the incompatibility of the student and wife-mother roles, given the asymmetry of
gender roles within marriage (Tsuya and Mason 1995) and the strong link between mar-
riage and childbearing (Morgan, Rindfuss, and Parnell 1984; NIPSSR 1999). It is inter-
esting to note that in one of the only previous analyses of marriage timing to control for
school enrollment, Shirahase (2000) found that increasing educational attainment has
contributed to later marriage in Japan primarily by delaying women's initial exposure to
the risk of marriage, thus calling into question the general relevance of Blossfeld's
(1995a) conclusion regarding the importance of "traditional" family systems.
The second important limitation of the models estimated in most previous studies is
the assumption of proportional hazards. Constraining the relationship between educational
attainment and the risk of marriage to be proportional precludes an assessment of whether
higher education is associated primarily with delayed marriage or with a higher likeli-
hood of never marrying. The negative coefficients for higher educational attainment esti-
mated in proportional hazards models are, by definition, consistent with both later and
less marriage for highly educated women. The few previous analyses of Japanese mar-
riage that have not assumed a proportional relationship between education and risk of
marriage have suggested that higher education may be associated with an increase in the
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 87

proportion of women wh6 never marry. For example, analyses of aggregate data (Ogura
and Dekle 1992; Raymo 1998) have shown the prevalence of marriage to be lower across
the typical range of marriageable ages in regions that are characterized by higher levels
of educational attainment, and one analysis of individual-level data (Tsuya and Mason
1995) found that the association between educational attainment and the risk of marriage
is negative at young ages, positive or insignificant at "typical" marriage ages (i.e., 25 and
26), and negative again at older ages. These findings appear consistent with the hypoth-
esized negative relationship between higher education and the risk of marriage in societ-
ies such as Japan, where an asymmetric gender division of labor makes it difficult for
women to combine work and family.
A third important limitation of previous work is that by constraining the relationship
between education and the risk of marriage to be time invariant, researchers have implic-
itly, assumed that the only possible link between education and aggregate trends in
marriage timing is through change in the educational composition of the population. In
other words, because highly educated women have a time-invariant lower risk of mar-
riage, any relationship between education and the trend toward later and less marriage
must reflect an increase in the representation of highly educated women of marriageable
age. Although such compositional change may, in fact, explain observed trends, it seems
unreasonable to eliminate a priori another potentially important explanation: change in
the nature of the relationship between educational attainment and the timing of mar-
riage.4 Considering the possibility of such change is particularly important in light of
evidence regarding women's economic opportunities and changes in family-related atti-
tudes over the past two decades. Although the enactment of the Equal
Employment Opportunity Law in 1986 has not resulted in dramatic improvements in
women's relative economic status, increases in both the female-male wage ratio (from
.55 in 1980 to .63 in 2000) and women's representation in higher-status, traditionally
"male" occupations are suggestive of improvements in women's economic opportuni-
ties.5 Changes in attitudes toward family and gender roles during the same period have
been more substantial. Attitudinal survey data have shown clear declines in support for
the gender-inegalitarian division of labor between husbands and wives, as well as in the
disapproval of premarital sex, childlessness, and divorce (Atoh 2001; NIPSSR 2000),
leading some scholars to state that changing attitudes are an important part of the expla-
nation for the trend toward later marriage and lower fertility (Atoh 2001; Retherford et
al. 2001; Tsuya and Mason 1995). A similar interpretation is suggested by attitudinal
data indicating that single men and women are increasingly interested in marrying on
their own terms and less interested in marrying to fulfill parental or societal expectations
(Kaneko 2000). To the extent that increasing economic opportunities for women and the
degree of change in attitudes toward marriage and family differ across educational
groups (as suggested by Tsuya and Mason 1995), the assumption of time-invariant edu-
cational differences in the risk of marriage may be inappropriate.
In sum, the failure to separate the effects of school enrollment and educational attain-
ment and the assumption of a proportional and time-invariant relationship between educa-
tion and the risk of marriage have effectively limited previous studies to only one possible
conclusion: that any relationship between education and the trend toward later and less
marriage in Japan must reflect increases in the proportion of women obtaining postsecond-
ary education. In this study, I sought to present a more complete picture of the relationship
between increasing educational attainment and the trend toward later and less marriage

4. Several studies have suggested that the assumption of time invariance is unlikely to hold inthe United
States (e.g., Mare 1991; Qian and Preston 1993; Sweeney 2002). ! I
5. These female-male wage ratios come from the Basic Survey of Wage Structure (various years) and
reflect average wages across industries, firm size, ages, and levels of educational attainment.
88 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1,February 2003

among Japanese women by relaxing these three constraints to adequately address the same
questions that guided the comparative studies in Blossfeld (1995b): (1) Is higher educa-
tional attainment associated with later marriage?; (2) Is higher educational attainment
associated with less marriage?; (3) Is higher educational attainment increasingly associ-
ated with later marriage?; and (4) Is higher educational attainment increasinglyassociated
with less marriage?
DATA AND METHODS
To address these questions, I used data from the 10th National Fertility Survey (lONFS)
to estimate a series of nested hazard models for the transition to first marriage. 1ONFS is
a nationally representative survey of women aged 18-49 that was conducted in July 1992
by the Institute of Population Problems (IPP) in the Japanese Ministry of I-Iealth and Wel-
fare.6 A total of 12,503 women (8,574 married and 3,929 never married) provided infor-
mation on the date of their marriage and educational attainment. A key feature of these
data is that, in addition to educational attainment and date of marriage, married respon-
dents were asked to provide retrospective information on several individual and family
characteristics prior to marriage. This retrospective information made it possible to esti-
mate hazard models for the transition to first marriage by pooling the surveys of married
and unmarried women. At the same time, however, the cross-sectional nature of the data
forced me to assume that important control variables, such as occupation and place of
residence, are time invariant prior to marriage. This is a potentially serious, but unavoid-
able, shortcoming of using cross-sectional data.
A second important limitation is the absence of information on previously married
women. Although I ONFS surveyed all women aged 18-49, information is available only
for women in their first marriages and never-married women. The number of previously
married women lost as a result of this restriction is not small (approximately 10% of the
total sample), and the results will be biased to the extent that the relationship between
educational attainment and the transition to first marriage for these unobserved women
differs systematically from that for the observed women. Unfortunately, however, there is
no way to evaluate the potential importance of such bias. 7 A third potentially important
limitation is the lower response rate among unmarried women. A comparison of tabula-
tions of marital status by age and education in the 1ONFS data with similar tabulations
from the 1990 census suggests that higher rates of nonresponse among unmarried women
were concentrated among junior high school graduates in their early 20s and junior col-
lege graduates in their late 20s (Raymo 2000). The latter suggests the possibility that the
risk of marriage for junior college graduates in the 10NFS may be biased upward, par-
ticularly in more recent years.
After respondents who married before high school graduation and those with missing
data on any of the variables included in the subsequent analyses were eliminated, the
sample size was reduced to 11,387. The characteristics of these respondents are described
in Table 2. The covariates of central interest are age, completed educational attainment,

6. IONFS was based on a two-stage systematic sampling of all census enumeration districts in Japan. It is
composed of a systematic sample of 490 census tracts that were drawn from the 940 tracts surveyed by the 1992
Kokumin Seikatsu Kiso Chosa (Basic Survey of National Life, also conducted by the Ministry of Health and
Welfare), which, in tum, were systematically sampled from the roughly 800,000 census tracts established for
the 1990 census (IPP 1993:1). The response rate was 95% for married women and 88% for unmarried women.
Eliminating retumed questionnaires with incomplete or inconsistent responses reduced the effective response
rates to 91% and 78%, respectively (IPP 1993, 1994).
7. The minimum information required for an evaluation of the importance of systematic differences be-
tween currently and previously married women is the age, educational attainment, and age at first marriage for
previously married women. The census, which is the most likely source of such information, provides informa-
tion on the first two measures, but not the third.
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage I 89

Table 2. Characteristics of 1ONFS Respondents


Variable Percentage Variable Percentage
Marital Status Mother's Work Status
Married 67.96 Employed full-time 16.54
Unmarried 32.04 Employed part-time 17.44
Educational Attainment Self-employed 33.35
,Junior high school 8.83 Not working 32.67
High school 50.54 Number of Siblings
Junior college/vocational Only child 5.50
, school 29.09 One 37.10
University 11.64 Two 30.81
Occupation Three or more 26.59
Not working 5.91 Living Arrangements
Part-time/irregular work 3.38 Living with parents 75.79
Student 7.10 Not living with parents 24.21
Agriculture 0.37 Region'
Self-employed 1.68 Hokkaido 3.85
Blue collar 6.92 Tohoku 6.89
White collar 56.72 Kanto 31.97
Professional-managerial 16.91 Chubu 18.24
Other/missing 1.01 Kansai 17.24
Father's Occupation Chugoku and Shikoku 9.67
Part-time/not working 2.1 Kyushu and Okinawa 12.15
Agriculture 16.29 Area
Self-employed 21.09 Urban 81.11
Blue collar 16.86 Rural 18.89
White collar 16.47 Birth Cohort I
Professional-managerial 25.71 1942-1957 47.75
Other/missing 1.48 1958-1974 52.25
aThe prefectures comprising each of these seven regions are as follows: Hokkaido (Hokkaido); Tohoku (Aomori, Iwate,
Miyagi, Akita, Yamagata, Fukushima); Kanto (Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Niigata); Chubu
(Toyama, Ishikawa, Fukui, Yamanashi, Naganio, Gifu, Shizuoka, Aichi); Kansai (Mic, Shiga, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyogo, Nara,
Wakayama); Chugoku and Shikoku (Tottori, Shimane, Okayama, Hiroshima, Yamaguchi, Tokushima, Kagawa, Ehime, Kochi);
and Kyushu and Okinawa (Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto, Oita, Miyazaki, Kagoshima, Okinawa).

and birth cohort. As in most previous research on Japanese marriage, I measured educa-
tional attainment as a four-category variable corresponding to the similar measure used in
analyses of U.S. data. The variable for birth cohort, which enabled me to relax the time-
invariance constraint, was defined by splitting the 1ONFS respondents into two groups:
those born between 1942 and 1957 and those born between 1958 and 1974. The decision to
dichotomize birth cohort in this way was both substantively and methodologically moti-
vated. Conveniently viewing age 22 as the lower end of the prime marriage age range and
adopting 1980 as a meaningful indicator of the onset of rapid attitudinal change (Atoh
2001), this dichotomization of birth cohort provides a rough proxy for the attitudinal envi-
ronment in which young women have contemplated and entered marriage (i.e., the oldest
90 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003

members of the second cohort were 22 years old in 1980). Although any categorization of
birth cohort is ultimately arbitrary, this measure is also convenient in providing a parsimo-
nious and intuitive means of evaluating the assumption of time-invariant effects of educa-
tion while enabling me to examine the experience of two cohorts across the range bf prime
marriage ages (the oldest members of the second cohort were 34 at the time of the survey
in 1992).1
In addition to education and cohort, all models included several control variables
examined in previous analyses of Japanese marriage timing. The respondents' premarital
occupation was included as an additional measure of economic resources and career pros-
pects, with higher-status occupations expected to be negatively associated with the risk of
marriage (Kojima 1994a, 1995). Living arrangements, father's occupation, and mother's
labor-force participation all reflect characteristics of the home environment and the avail-
ability of parental resources. Earlier studies found the risk of marriage to be positively
associated with coresidence with parents and mother's level of labor-force participation
(Kojima 1994a, 1995). Sibship size has been found to be positively associated with the
risk of marriage for both men and women (Kojima 1994b). Region and urban-rural resi-
dence were included as proxies of contextual and normative environment. These vari-
ables, shown in previous research to be significantly related to the risk of marriage
(Kojima 1994a, 1994b, 1995; Tsuya and Mason 1995), may represent a variety of factors,
including economic opportunities, marriage-market opportunities, and family-related at-
titudes. To reiterate, all control variables except number of siblings and father's occupa-
tion are retrospectively assessed premarital characteristics of married women and current
(i.e., 1992) characteristics of unmarried women.
To facilitate the estimation of models that both control for school enrollment and relax
the assumption of proportional hazards, I transformed the cross-sectional data described in
Table 2 into person-year records. That is, after merging the unmarried and married samples,
I generated one observation for each person-year of life lived between the initial exposure
to the risk of first marriage and marriage (for the married sample) or the survey date (for
the unmarried sample). Here, initial exposure to the risk of marriage is equated with the
completion of high school. 9 In the absence of retrospective educational histories, I ap-
proximated the month of high school completion by using information on month and year
of birth in conjunction with the formulaic age at which children begin compulsory educa-
tion (in April following the 6th birthday) and by assuming that there was no grade reten-
tion or skipping.' 0 The duration variable is therefore years since completing high school
(approximately equal to current age minus 18). To control for enrollment in postsecondary
education, I first constructed a time-varying measure of enrollment, which is equal to 1 for
the first two years of exposure for graduates of two-yearjunior colleges/vocational schools
and the first four years of exposure for graduates of four-year universities, and equal to 0
for all other observations. This is clearly an approximation in that it assumes that all
respondents followed a model educational trajectory without interruptions or delays. Al-
though obviously untenable in the United States, such an assumption is probably not un-
reasonable in the Japanese context." Rather than include this dichotomous indicator of
8. Because the decision to split the sample into those born beforeNand after 1958 was an arbitrary one, I
examined several other specifications of cohort. The conclusions were not substantially altered either by using
a trichotomous categorization of birth cohort or by small changes in the range of years included in each cohort.
9. A total of 73 respondents who married before high school graduation were thus eliminated from the
analysis. These early marriages included 54 junior high school graduates, 15 high school graduates, 3 junior
college graduates, and I university graduate.
10. For the sake of consistency, initial exposure to the risk of marriage for respondents who did not com-
plete high school is equated with the month at which they would have completed high school.
I1. Tabulations of the enrollment variable and respondents' stated premarital occupation indicate that my
approximation of enrollment resulted in inconsistencies for 115 cases (1% of the sample). For the married
respondents, these were cases in which the stated premarital occupation was student, but marriage occurred
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 91

enrollment as a covariate or use it to construct a time-varying measure of educational


attainment (as in Otani 1993), I used it to construct a time-varying measure of premarital
occupation. That is, I recoded premarital occupation to equal "student" for each person-
year during which the enrollment variable is equal to 1.12 Controlling for the marriage-
inhibiting effect of school enrollment in this way enabled me to address the first of the
three methodological limitations described earlier. 13
These quasi-longitudinal data permit a straightforward estimation of models in which
the relationship between educational attainment and the risk of marriage is allowed to
vary by the duration of exposure (i.e., years since completing high'school). Specifically, I
estimated the following series of nested discrete-time hazard models for the transition to
first marriage:

Model 1: ln[p,,/(1 -p,,)] = PIDURi(t) + f32EDUi + I33COHORT, + P,4Z(t)

Model 2: ln[p1 /(1 -p,,)] = Model 1 + f35(DUR,(t) x EDU,)

Model 3: ln[p,1/(1 -pj,)] = Model 2 + f36(EDUi x COHORT;)

Model 4: ln[p,/(1 -pi,)] = Model 3 + , 7(DUR,(t) x COHORT;)

Model 5: ln[p,,/(l -p,,)] = Model 4 + P8(DUR,(t) x EDU, x COHORT,).

Here, the dependent variable is the log-odds of marriage for the ith woman at exposure
duration t, conditional on remaining unmarried through exposure duration t - 1 (i.e., p is
the probability of marriage). As was described earlier, duration of exposure (i.e., DUR) is
measured in person-years since completing high school. Thus, ,B,represents the baseline
hazard, which is specified as a linear spline with knots at 5, 8, and 11 years after complet-
ing high school (i.e., roughly ages 23, 26, and 29). Within each of the four segments
defined by these knots, the baseline hazard is linear in the log-odds of first marriage. This
parsimonious specification of the baseline hazard is particularly attractive, given the theo-
retical importance of the two- and three-way interaction terms estimated in Models 2-5.
Z is a vector consisting of the variables in Table 2 other than educational attainment and
cohort (i.e., time-varying occupation, father's occupation, mother's work status, number
of siblings, living arrangements, region of residence, and urban-rural residence). ,
The proportional odds specification of Model I serves as a baseline. By controlling
for the marriage-inhibiting effect of school enrollment via the time-varying measure of
premarital occupation, this model allowed me to determine whether the negative coeffi-
cients for higher education found in previous studies primarily reflect later initial expo-
sure to the risk of first marriage or some other marriage-inhibiting effects of higher
education itself. By relaxing the assumption of proportionality in Model 2, I was able to
address the first two questions posed earlier. Controlling for the marriage-delaying effect
of educational enrollment and allowing the duration-specific risk of marriage to vary by
after the estimated month of completing the highest level of education. For the unmarried respondents, these
were cases inwhich the stated current occupation was student, but age at the survey was older than the estimated
age at completing the highest level of education. These inconsistencies may reflect misreporting, women who
did not follow a model educational trajectory, women who attended graduate school, or women who married
shortly after they completed school. Tabulations of age at marriage suggest that the latter scenario applies to
27% (n=31) of these inconsistencies.
12. I coded,the 115 inconsistent cases described in footnote II as "not working."
13. Although this approach controls for the marriage-inhibiting effect of school enrollment, it does not
control for the possible endogeneity of educational attainment and the timing of marriage. The results will be
biased to the extent that women who are less enthusiastic about early marriage are more likely to remain in
school longer. 'I
92 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003

educational attainment enabled me to determine if more highly educated women are less
likely ever to marry than are their less-educated counterparts or if they "catch up" by
marrying at higher rates at later ages. In either event, the results of Model 2 can be con-
sistent with only one limited explanation of observed trends in marriage. Because the
relationship between educational attainment and the risk of marriage is constrained to be
time invariant, the results of this model imply that any relationship between education
and the trend toward later marriage (and perhaps the trend toward less marriage) for
women is the result of compositional change in the educational characteristics of the fe-
male population (i.e., increasing educational attainment).
To address my third and fourth questions, I relaxed this time-invariance constraint.
Model 3 recognizes that the relationship between education and marriage may have
changed over time by allowing cohort change in the risk of marriage to vary by level of
educational attainment. If the desirability or feasibility of (early) marriage among highly
educated women has declined over time, the coefficients for the interaction between re-
cent cohort and higher education should be significantly negative. This model is limited,
however, in that the education-specific changes across cohorts are constrained to be pro-
portional. As a consequence, negative coefficients for the interaction between recent co-
hort and higher education would imply that higher education is increasingly associated
with both later and less marriage. Just as Model 1 precludes the possibility that highly
educated women catch up to their less-educated counterparts by marrying at higher rates
at later ages, Model 3 precludes the possibility that highly educated women are increas-
ingly likely to delay, but not avoid, marriage.
Model 4 is an intermediate model that allows the shape of the first-marriage curve to
vary by cohort. It is accomplished by estimating coefficients for the two-way interaction
between cohort and duration of exposure (DUR(t) x COHORT). In Model 5, the least-
restrictive model, I estimated all two- and three-way interactions between duration of
exposure, educational attainment, and cohort. By allowing education-specific changes in
the risk of marriage to be nonproportional, the results of this model enabled me to deter-
mine whether higher educational attainment is increasingly associated with later and/or
less marriage.
RESULTS
The results of the baseline model (Model 1) show that highly educated women marry later
than do their less-educated counterparts, even-after I controlled for the low rates of mar-
riage while enrolled in postsecondary schooling. The coefficients presented in the first
column of Table 3 indicate that school enrollment reduces the odds of marriage by 87%
(i.e., 1 - exp(-2.03) = .87) and that net of this marriage-inhibiting effect of enrollment, the
odds of marriage are roughly 25% lower for junior college and university graduates than
for high school graduates. Compared with previous analyses of these same data that did
not control for enrollment (Kojima 1994a, 1995), these coefficients are similar for junior
college graduates but substantially smaller (i.e., less negative) for university graduates,
suggesting that delayed entry into the marriage market resulting from longer enrollment
plays an important role in explaining later marriage among the most highly educated Japa-
nese women. The results of Model 1 are thus consistent both with explanations that have
emnphasized the incompatibility of student and spousal roles (e.g., Goldscheider and Waite
1986; Marini 1978, 1985) and with those that have emphasized other theoretical mecha-
nisms through which higher education may reduce the risk of marriage above and beyond
the delay in initial exposure (e.g., reduced gains to marriage, extended spouse search).
Significant differences in the risk of marriage also exist across categories of all con-
trol variables. Relative to white-collar employees, the risk of marriage is lower for women
in the most prestigious occupational category (professional-managerial), perhaps reflect-
ing the hypothesized marriage-inhibiting effect of greater economic resources. It is inter-
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 93

Table 3. Estimated Coefficients For Models 1-5


Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Exposure (Years out of
High School)
T(O-5) 0.59** 0.68** 0.68** 0.73** 0.72**
T(5-8) 0.20** 0.11** 0.11** 0.07** 0.08**
T(8-11) -0.13** -0.16** -0.16** -0.16** -0.15**
T(11+) -0.25** -0.22** -0.22** -0.21** -0.22**
Educational Attainment
Junior High School OHS) 0.18** 1.28** 1.27** 1.39** 1.27**
High School (HS) (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Junior College/Vocational
School UC) -0.24** -1.59** -1.54** -1.60** -i.46**
University (UTNI) -0.27** -3.34** -3.19** -3.15** -2.48*
Birth Cohort
1942-1957 (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
1958-1974 -0.51** -0.51** -0.45** 0.07 -0.02
Exposure x Education
T(0-5) xJHS -0.24** -0.24** -0.27** -0.24*
T(0-5) x JC 0.22** 0.22** 0.23** 0.21**
T(0-5) x UNI 0.44* 0.44* 0.43* 0.32
T(5-8) x JHS _0.09t -0.09t -0.07 -0.08
T(5-8) x JC 0.20** 0.20** 0.19** 0.18**
T(5-8) x UNI 0.41** 0.41** 0.41** 0.36**
T(8-11) xJHS 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05
T(8-11) xJC 0.03 0.03 0.03 0.00
T(8-11) x UNI 0.12* 0.12* 0 .llt 0.11
T(11i+) xJHS -0.08 -0.08 -0.08 -0.07
T(11+) xJC -0.04 -0.05 -0.04 -0.02
T(1l+) x UNI -0.06 -0.08 -0.07 -0.04
Education x Cohort
JHS x 1958-1974 0.18 0.80*
JC x 1958-1974 -0. 12t -0.36
UNI x 1958-1974 -0.34** -2.58
Exposure x Cohort
T(0-5) x 1958-1974 -0.14** -0.11
T(5-8) x 1958-1974 0.09** 0.06
T(8-11) x 1958-1974 0.02 -0.03
T(11+) x 1958-1974 0.00 0.11
(continued)

esting, however, that the relative risk of marriage is lower for women in one of the less-
prestigious occupational categories (self-employed), as well as those without stable em-
ployment (i.e., part-time and not working). Parental characteristics are also related to dau-
ghters' risk of marriage. Relative to daughters of blue-collar employees, the risk of mar-
riage is higher for those whose fathers worked in agriculture and lower for those whose
fathers had limited employment. The risk of marriage is' also significantly higher for
94 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003

(Table3, continued)
Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Exposure x Educadion x Cohort
T(0-5) xJHS x 1958-1974 -0.16
T(0-5) xJC x 1958-1974 0.04
T(0-5) x UNI x 1958-1974 0.40
T(54) xJHS x 1958-1974 0.01
T(5-8) xJCx 1958-1974 0.03
T(5-8) x UNI x 1958-1974 0.13
T(8-1 1) xJHS x 1958-1974 0.02
T(8-11) xJCx 1958-1974 0.10
T(8-1 ) x UNI x 1958-1974 0.06
T(11-+) xJHSx 1958-1974 -0.25
T(11+)xJCx 1958-1974 -0.14
T(11+) x UNI x 1958-1974 -0.31
Occupation
Enrolled in school -2.03** -0.72* -0.73* -0.75* -0.74*
Not working -0.22** -0.20** -0.21** -0.21** -0.21**
Working part-time -0.31** -0.30** -0.32** -0.32** -0.32**
Agriculture 0.00 -0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01
Self-employed -0.76** -0.74** -0.75* -0.74** -0.74**
Blue collar 0.15** 0.12* 0.12* 0.12* 0.12*
White collar (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Professional-managerial -0.11 ** -0.12** -0.13** -0.13** -0.13**
Other/missing -0.14 -0.16 -0.16 -0.16 -0.16
Father's Occupation
Employed part-time/not
working 4.39** -0.37** 4.37** -0.37** -0.37**
Agriculture 0.12** 0.11* 0.11* 0.11* 0.11*
Self-employed -0.06 -0.06 -0.06 -0.06 -0.06
Blue collar (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
White collar -0.07 -0.07 -0.06 -0.07 -0.07
Professional-managerial 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Other/missing 0.07 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04
Mother's Work Status
Employed full-time (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Employed part-time -0.01 -0.01 0.00 0.00 -0.01
Self-employed 0.12** 0.12** 0.12** 0.12** 0.12**
Not working -0.22** -0.22** -0.22** -0.22** -0.22**
(continued)

women whose mothers were employed (full-time, part-time, or self-


employed), perhaps reflecting the ability of nonworking mothers to provide a level of
domestic services that decreases the benefits of early marriage relative to extended coresi-
dence with parents (Yamada 1999). The significant positive coefficients for larger sibship
size and premarital coresidence with parents suggest that these variables may reflect
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 95

(bie3, continued)
Variable Model I Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5
Number of Siblings
Only child -0.06 -0.06 -0.06 -0.06 -0.06
One (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Two 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05
Three or more 0.13** 0.13** 0.14** o.14** 0.13**
Living Arrangements
Living with parents 0.16** 0.16** 0.16"" 0.16** 0.16**
Not living with
parents (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Region
Hokkaido -0.19** -0.20"" -0.21"" -0.21** -0.21**
Tohoku -0.14" -0.13" -0.14" -0.14" -0.14"
Kanto -0.28"" -0.29"" -0.29"" -0.29** -0.29**
Chubu (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Kansai -0.06 -0.06 -0.06 -0.07 -0.07
Chugoku and Shikoku 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02
Kyushu and Okinawa -0.27"" -0.26** -0.26"" -0.26** -0.26**
Area
Urban (omitted) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Rural -0.06t -0.06t -0.O6t -0.06t -0.06t
Constant -4.25** -4.50** -4.53** -4.72** -4.68**
Chi-Square 6,929 7,268 7,286 7,310 7,324
df 36 48 51 55 67
N 75,532 75,532 75,532 75,532 75,532
tp <.10; *p<.05;"p <.01

positive attitudes toward marriage and/or a desire for independence and privacy. Finally,
there is substantial regional variation, with residence in both the northern (Hokkaido,
Tohoku, and Kanto) and southern (Kyushu and Okinawa) parts of Japan associated with a
lower risk of marriage than residence in the central regions. The large negative coeffi-
cient for Kanto may reflect factors such as high housing costs and abundant alternatives
to marriage in the Tokyo metropolitan area, whereas other significant differences may
reflect regional variation in family-related attitudes and limited marriage-market opportu-
nities in less-central parts of the country. The potential importance of limited marriage-
market opportunities is further suggested by the slightly lower risk of marriage associated
with rural residence.
Although the results of this baseline model provide a general picture of the corre-
lates of the timing of first marriage among Japanese women, they are insufficient to
address the four questions posed earlier. To do so, it is necessary to relax the constraints
of time invariance and proportionality. Allowing the slopes of the component segments
of the first-marriage curve to vary by level of education in Model 2 greatly improves the
model fit (a 339-point increase in chi-square for 12 degrees of freedom, p < .001). More
important, by allowing both the level and the shape of the first-marriage curve to vary by
education, I was able to determine the extent to which higher education is associated
with later and/or less marriage. Because the estimated interaction coefficients in Table 3
are difficult to interpret individually (i.e., educational differences in the segment-specific
Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003
96
Figure 1. Predicted Survival Curves From Model 2, by Education

.9
- Junior High School
.8 \ High School
.7 \ \ \ \ Junior Collegc/Vocational School
. University
.6

.5
04
0
.4 0 X X.
04
.3

.2

.1 .B

O - . .t
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Years Since Completing High School

slopes of the first-marriage curve), I present the results in the form of predicted survival
curves in Figure 1. I produced these survival curves, which represent the cumulative
probability that a reference woman remains unmarried, by using predicted duration-
specific marriage probabilities to calculate life-table survival probabilities for women at
each level of educational attainment. 14
From these survival curves, it is clear that although highly educated women marry
later than their less-educated counterparts, there are no educational differences in the pro-
portion who ever marry. Thirteen years after the completion of high school (approximately
age 31), the percentage never married is 60/o-8% for women of all educational levels.
Educational differences in the segment-specific slopes of the first-marriage curves also
suggest that later marriage for highly educated women is due primarily to delayed expo-
sure to the risk of marriage. Net of the large negative shifts in the intercept for junior
college and university graduates (-1.59 and -3.34, respectively) and net of the strong
marriage-inhibiting effect of school enrollment (-0.72), highly educated women actually
marry more rapidly than do their less-educated counterparts (i.e., the slopes of the first two
segments of the first-marriage curve are significantly steeper for highly educated women).
The results of this model, therefore, are not consistent with the suggestion that highly
asymmetric gender roles contribute to the likelihood that highly educated Japanese women
postpone or forgo marriage. Before the relevance of this suggestion can be rejected, how-
ever, it is necessary to explore the potential relationship between educational attainment

14. The reference women were those in the earlier birth cohort (1942-1957) who were living away from
their parents inan urban part of the Chubu region while employed inwhite-collarjobs, with one sibling, a father
working ina blue-collar occupation, and a mother employed full-time.
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 97

and cohort change in the risk of marriage. The large negative coefficient for the second
cohort (-0.51) suggests that delayed marriage attributable to increasing enrollment in
higher education can explain only part of the change in Japanese marriage timing.
By relaxing the time-invariance constraint in Model 3, it is possible to determine
whether the large cohort decline in the risk of marriage reflects a change in the relationship
between educational attainment and marriage. The significant improvement in the model
fit (an 18-point increase in chi-square for three degrees of freedom,p <.001) suggests that
contrary to the assumption implicit in previous studies, the relationship between educa-
tional attainment and the risk of marriage is not time invariant. Estimated coefficients
(third column of Table 3) show that the improvement in the model fit reflects a relatively
small cohort decline in the risk of marriage among the least-educated women and a rela-
tively large cohort decline among the most educated. Whereas high school graduates expe-
rienced a 36% decline across cohorts in the risk of marriage (i.e., 1 - exp[-.45] = .36), the
corresponding decline was 53% for university graduates (i.e., 1 - exp[-.45 - .31] = .53). It
thus appears that contrary to the findings of similar studies in the United States (e.g.,
Sweeney 2002), the relative risk of marriage for highly educated Japanese women has
declined across cohorts. This finding is consistent with the suggestion that increasing eco-
nomic opportunities for women in the absence of gender-role convergence may be contrib-
uting to a reduction in the gains to marriage and/or an extended period of employment
before marriage (Tsuya and Mason 1995; Yamada 1996).'5 If the former, higher education
should be increasingly associated with nonmarriage. If the latter, higher education should
be increasingly associated with delayed marriage. This distinction cannot be made, how-
ever, on the basis of the results of Model 3. Because the change across cohorts is con-
strained to be proportional, the negative interaction coefficient is consistent with both
outcomes. To answer my third and fourth questions, I therefore relaxed the assumption of
proportional change.
Model 4 allows the shape of the first-marriage curve to differ by cohort while con-
straining this change to be the same at all levels of educational attainment. This extension
also improves the model fit (a 24-point increase in chi-square for four degrees of freedom,
p < .001), indicating that not only the level, but also the shape, of the first-marriage curve
has changed over time. Model 5, in which changes in both the level and shape of the first-
marriage curve are allowed to vary by level of education, however, does not represent an
improvement over Model 4 (a 19-point increase in chi-square for 12 degrees of freedom,
p = .31). It thus appears that cohort change in the risk of marriage has been proportional
with respect to educational attaimnent. The significant negative coefficients in Model 4 for
the cohort interaction with junior college (-0.12) and university (-0.34) indicate therefore
that highly educated Japanese women are increasingly likely not only to marry later but
also to marry less. To describe this change graphically, I again present the results in the
form of life-table survival curves. Figure 2 presents life-table survival curves based on the
results of the full, three-way interaction model (Model 5) for reference women in both the
first cohort (solid lines) and the second cohort (broken lines).'" These survival curves
show that university education is increasingly associated with both later and less marriage
(at least through approximately age 34). At early ages, educational differences in the

15. Extending Model 3 to include cohort interactions with each of the other variables in the analysis indi-
cated that relative to the reference categories, cohort decline in the risk of marriage has been significantly
greater for women who were not working before marriage, as well as for those who were living in rural areas.
These changes suggest the potential importance of declining marriage-market opportunities. The decline in the
risk of marriage has been significantly smaller for self-employed women, those with three or more siblings, and
those whose mothers were working part-time. (The results of these supplemental models are available on re-
quest.)
16. For the sake of clarity, Figure 3 does not present survival curves for women with less than a high
school education.
98 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003

Figure 2. Predicted Survival Curves From Model 5, by Education and Cohort

Years Since Completing High School

proportion yet to marry are actually slightly smaller in the second cohort because of the
decline in the risk of marriage for high school graduates at young ages (when university
graduates are still enrolled in school). An increasing tendency for university graduates to
delay marriage, however, manifests itself 6 years after the completion of high school,
when educational differences in survival become larger for the second cohort. Although
survival curves begin to converge again at later ages, educational differences in the pro-
portion never married 16 years after completing high school (i.e., approximately age 34)
are clearly visible in the second cohort (.12 for high school graduates and .19 for univer-
sity graduates).
At the same time, however, it is important to recognize that this increasing tendency
for highly educated women to postpone or forgo marriage is of limited importance for
understanding recent trends in Japanese timing of marriage. From Figure 3, it is clear that
educational differences in the timing of marriage are less important than the general trend
toward both later and less marriage. For women with at least a high school education, the
median age at marriage (the age at which the proportion never married reaches .50) is 1-2
years higher and the proportion unmarried at approximately age 34 is 7-15 percentage
points higher in the second cohort. Oppenheimer, Blossfeld, and Wackerow (1995)
reached a similar conclusion about the importance of "across-the-board" declines in mar-
riage in the United States, the only country in Blossfeld's (1995b) study in which higher
education was positively related to marriage.
DISCUSSION
On the basis of the results of a recent comparative study of women's marriage timing
(Blossfeld 1995b), it has been suggested that higher education is associated with a reduced
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 99

risk of marriage only in societies in which women face strong structural and normative
difficulties in combining family and career. An ideal case for evaluating the validity of this
conclusion is Japan, where gender differences in family roles remain substantial despite
rapid relative improvements in women's educational attainment. Although research on
Japanese marriage has clearly established an inverse relationship between women's educa-
tional attainment and the risk of marriage, various methodological limitations have ob-
scured the nature of this relationship. Of particular importance are the failure to control for
school enrollment and the assumption that the relationship between educational attainment
and marriage is both proportional and time invariant.
Addressing these limitations, I found that, as in the United States and most Western
European countries (Blossfeld 1995b), higher educational attainment is associated with
later marriage among women in Japan primarily because longer enrollment in school
delays initial exposure to the risk of marriage. The aggregate trend toward later marriage
is thus related to the increasing participation of women in higher education, especially
attendance at four-year universities."7 However, by allowing educational differences in
marriage curves to vary by cohort, I found evidence consistent with the expectation that
higher educational attainment itself should reduce the risk of marriage for Japanese
women. Specifically, I found that the large decline in the risk of marriage across cohorts
has been the greatest for th'e most highly educated. This differential decline appears to
reflect both later and less marriage among the most educated. My findings, therefore,
I provide some evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis that economic resources (as
proxied by higher educational attainment) reduce the risk of marriage for women in soci-
eties that are characterized by highly asymmetric gender roles. In light of the aforemen-
tioned evidence that the returns to higher education are relatively low for Japanese
women (Brinton 1993; Ishida 1998), it is possible that my results understate support for
Blossfeld's hypothesis. Stronger support may be found in subsequent evaluations of the
relationship between marriage timing and more direct measures of economic resources,
such as wages and occupational prestige. My analyses do not, however, provide an an-
swer to the question of ultimate interest: why are Japanese women marrying later and
less than in the past? As in studies of changing marriage behavior in the United States
(e.g., Oppenheimer et al. 1995), my results show that educational differences in the tran-
sition to first marriage are relatively small in comparison with change in marriage be-'
havior across educational categories. Regardless of educational attainment, Japanese
women are marrying later than in the past, and it appears that an increasing proportion of
the currently unmarried are likely never to marry.
Although marriage behavior in most industrialized countries is characterized by
similar changes, the implications of later and less marriage are particularly important in
Japan. With few family alternatives to marriage, the relationship between the timing of
marriage and the timing of union/family formation in Japan is much more direct than in the
United States and Western European countries, where increases in cohabitation and single
parenthood have accompanied declining rates of marriage. Indeed, nearly all the decline in
the Japanese total fertility rate (from 2.14 in 1973 to 1.36 in 2000) was due to the decreas-
ing proportion of women of childbearing age who were married (e.g., Tsuya and Mason
1995). With the Japanese population aging rapidly, this direct link between marriage and
fertility has made the trend toward later and less marriage of great economic and political
relevance. Later and less marriage also has important implications at the individual and
family levels, in that it has led to large increases in the number of unmarried adult children
coresiding with parents (Yamada 1996, 1999) and raises concern about the well-being of

17. A calculation of counterfactual life-table survival curves (results not shown), however, showed that
increasing educational attainment explains only a small proportion of the overall change in the timing of mar-
riage across cohorts.
100 Demography, Volume 40-Number 1, February 2003

the rapidly growing elderly population (i.e., given the importance of care provided by
married children and their spouses). Furthermore, because later marriage results in later
childbirth, it is also increasingly likely that the period of intensive child care responsibili-
ties will overlap with the provision of care to elderly parents. This is a particularly daunt-
ing prospect for women, who not only have traditionally been the primary providers of
care to both groups but also are increasingly engaged in employment outside the home.
Some explanations that may be consistent with my results have been offered in the
literature. One argument suggests that rather than changes in the desirability of marriage
itself, it is changes in the desire for children that are most important for understanding
changing marriage behavior. Because marriage is closely linked to the bearing and rear-
ing of children in Japan, the increasing financial and psychological costs of raising chil-
dren to succeed in the highly competitive Japanese educational system are thought to
reduce the desire to have children and, as a consequence, the desire to marry (Tsuya and
Choe forthcoming). At a more general level, it is possible that increases in the costs asso-
ciated with the formation of a new household (e.g., housing, food, children's education)
are a particularly important barrier to early marriage in Japan, where a large majority of
young men and women live with their parents before marriage (Mason and Tsuya forth-
coming; Yamada 1999). To the extent that such changes are independent of women's edu-
cational attainment, these explanations may be consistent with the results presented here.
Similarly, it is possible that the relationship between gender-role differentiation and
marriage is not education specific, as assumed in Blossfeld's (1995a) interpretation of
cross-national differences in the effect of educational attainment. It is possible that women
of all educational backgrounds are increasingly hesitant to assume the "onerous status of
the Japanese wife and mother" (Tsuya and Mason 1995:156). Recent studies of attitudes
toward marriage in Japan, in fact, have found little variation by educational attainment
(see, for example, Mason and Tsuya forthcoming). The possibility of such general change
is further suggested by the speed with which other innovative values and behavior have
diffused in the relatively homogeneous Japanese population (Hodge and Ogawa 1991;
Ogawa and Retherford 1997; Retherford, Ogawa, and Sakamoto 1996). If later and less
marriage are indeed related to changing attitudes toward marriage and gender roles, as
Atoh (2001) and Tsuya and Mason (1995) posited, the rapid diffusion of attitudes and
behaviors suggests that even if such change originated among more highly educated
women, the statistical detection of educational differences would be difficult. An impor-
tant task for subsequent research is to clarify the relationship between attitudes and mar-
riage timing by using direct measures of attitudes toward marriage and gender roles.
Finally, it is possible that although education may be associated with changing mar-
riage behavior, my analyses failed to detect educational differences in behavior because
different mechanisms are producing similar pattems of change across the educational spec-
trum. For example, it is possible that reduced gains to marriage are indeed prompting some
of the most highly educated women to forgo marriage, while increasing competition for a
relatively smaller pool of highly educated men is prolonging the spouse-search process for
female junior college graduates, and the increasing costs of child rearing are prompting
less-educated women (and their potential husbands) to postpone marriage. Education-
specific explanations such as these cannot be evaluated with the available data, however.
Several other important limitations of this study should also be recognized. The first
is the use of cross-sectional data to analyze the transition to first marriage. My reliance
on retrospective information not only necessitated strong assumptions regarding both the
stability of important control variables and the timning of school completion but also has
precluded the incorporation of attitudinal covariates. A second limitation was my inabil-
ity to observe the marriage behavior of the more recent cohort beyond age 34. Updating
these analyses with more recently collected data will facilitate more definitive conclu-
sions about educational differences in the proportion of women who never marry. A third
Educational Attainment and Transition to First Marriage 101

important limitation is that my analyses ignored men. The focus on women was a natural
consequence of my desire to evaluate Japanese marriage patterns in the context of exist-
ing comparative studies. However, a more promising avenue for rigorous evaluation of
the determinants of the timing of marriage for either sex is the use of modeling tech-
niques that explicitly recognize the two-sided nature of decisions to marry (Logan, Hoff,
and Newton 1999). Subsequent research using prospective data to examine the marriage
behavior of men and women simultaneously should facilitate the distinction among alter-
native theoretical explanations, thus providing a better understanding of dramatic changes
in the transition to marriage in Japan and other industrialized countries.
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