Ryota Mugiyama

Recent research shows that gender ideology may not be stable among individuals over time. However, there is little evidence on the changes in gender and family attitudes in non-Western contexts. Using data from 11 waves (2011–2021) of the Japanese Panel Survey of Consumers (JPSC), we construct fixed-effects models that reveal how women’s gender attitudes, together with life eventssuch as parenthood and women’s employment, shape unpaid work distribution in Japanese couples. Overall, our results show that shifts in wives’ gender ideology do not consistently lead to increased husband participation in domestic labor. However, this relationship becomes more nuanced when we distinguish between weekdays and weekends. On weekdays, when work demands are highest, more egalitarian shifts in the wife’s attitudes are associated with increased domestic involvement from husbands. Yet, the transition to parenthood significantly decreases men’s participation during weekdays, suggesting that women continue to carry the bulk of weekday childcare responsibilities.

Objective: Our study analyses the relationship between employment conditions and non-coresidential partnership status among women and men in two very-low fertility countries: Italy and Japan. Background: Having a partner is the initial stage of any subsequent family formation. Several studies have reported that precarious employment conditions have negative effects on both union formation and fertility; however, less is known about the previous step, namely, having a non-coresidential partner. Method: We use two nationally representative surveys and examine the association between employment condition and partnership status among individuals aged 23–43 who have not yet had children and are not currently cohabiting or married at the survey, employing logistic regression models. Results: Our results suggest that employment conditions do not have statistically significant associations with partnership status except women who have a precarious employment status (i.e. those who do not know their contract type) as well as unemployed/inactive women in Japan and self-employed men in Italy. We interpret our findings as suggesting that in Italy, employment conditions do not significantly matter for starting a relationship for both men and women, likely due to the prevalence of employment uncertainty among young Italians. As for Japanese women, those who are unemployed/inactive, as well as those who do not know their contract type, may face challenges in finding a partner with their desired earning capacity. Conclusion: This is one of the few studies focusing on non-coresidential partnership as the initial step of further family formation.

Abstract Downward trends in class and occupational returns to education have mainly been attributed to educational expansion via credential inflation. However, despite this rapid educational expansion, trends in returns to education vary across societies. This study proposes that changes in population size can contribute to offsetting the impact of educational expansion, controlling for demand-side factors. Using nationally representative survey data from Japan, we analysed trends in class and occupational returns to education at the first job of individuals born between 1942 and 1986. We found that a smaller cohort size increased the advantage of the highly educated in reaching higher occupational positions and upper service class positions, while a higher university graduation rate decreased this advantage. A counterfactual simulation demonstrated that the fluctuation in returns to education was driven by the pace of educational expansion relative to reductions in cohort size. These findings suggest that declining cohort sizes have counterbalanced credential inflation and caused stable trends in returns to education. We argue that mixed trends in class and occupational returns to education can be explained by the different paces of population change across societies.