We have examined in this report, demographic life courses of women in Japan, cohort born from 1890 to 1940. For cohort born 1950 and later, we draw out and project by simulating the most recent demographic trends.
Results are follows; in past hundred years, demographic changes in women's life courses in Japan were mainly characterized by rapid fall of mortality and fertility.
The mortality decline has diminished the premature deaths of women greatly, also has reduced the number of widows steadily. As the results of mortality decline, we can say, the women's welfare in Japan has increased.
In the same way as mortality decline, fertility decline in that period has influenced in a large scale the women's life courses in Japan. Mean number of children ever born per woman at the age of reproductive completion in Japan; have decreased from 5.3 for female cohort born at 1890 to 2.2 for cohort at 1940. Making a brief remark the change in fertility among these cohorts, "bear fewer, but_ not no children" was the motto in these successive cohorts.
Cohort by cohort, age at marriage of women in Japan has gradually been rising. Recently, a remarkable change in the demographic factors in women's life courses in Japan is the increase in never married. Among the earlier cohorts born 1940 and before, proportions of never married women at age 25-29 had increased from 8 percent to 20 percent. For cohorts born 1950 and after, proportions of never married women at same age have increased from 24 percent to 40 percent.
Not only the ascent of age at marriage, proportions of never married women at age 50 have increased from I or 2 percent among the early cohort, to 5 or more percent among the later cohort. By drawing out the most recent trends, we can see the proportions of never married at age 50 in the future, will become 8 or 9 percent.
The proportions of divorced among Japanese women age at 50 were 2 or 3 percent in the early cohort and 3 or 5 in the later cohort. Future simulation of proportions of divorced among women will be 6 or 7 percent among Japanese women. It is to say for trends of proportions of divorce, not so much, but steady increase. In Japanese contemporary circumstances such as existence of vast gap of wage between men and women, the rise in proportions of divorced among women may be somewhat making of economic troubles in life of the women and their children.
It suggests the intense needs for policies of social and economic welfare for family of mother and children and policies for equal wage between working men and women in contemporary Japan. The latter needs are common to the growing never married women and the working married women too.