Women's Human Capital and Their Family Formation in Japan : Who puts Off and Gives Up Childbearing?

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This article examines the influence of women's educational attainment on the probability and timing of having a first and a second child in Japan. To this end, we applied split population survival analysis to data from the 1998 National Family Research Survey (NFRJ98). The results of this study show that women's higher educational attainment extended the length of the interval between marriage and a first childbirth, but did not affect the probability of remaining childless. Similarly, highly-educated women tend to lenthen the period between a first and a second childbirth, but the probability of bearing a second child does not differ substantially among women's educational levels. In this regard, an increase in women's human capital in Japan does not lead to giving up, but postponing childbearing. The results of the present study also find that a rise in age at marriage significantly increases the probability of remaining childless and extends the length of the interval between marriage and a first birth, which indicates that getting married and having children are tightly interlocked in Japan. Furthermore, women's strong commitment to employment increases the probability of remaining childless and postpones the timing of a first birth after marriage, but such effects are not seen in their second childbearing behavior.