The Institute of Population Problems, Ministry of Health and Welfare, conducted the Survey on the Attitudes toward Marriage and the Family among the Unmarried Youth as a part of the Tenth Japanese National Fertility Survey on the first of July in 1992. The survey was carried out for the nationally representative sample of 12,394 unmarried Japanese men and women aged 18 to 49, which were chosen by two-stage cluster sampling methods. As a universe of sampling clusters, census enumeration districts of the 1990 Population Census were adopted. From the population of clusters, namely about 800 thousand census enumeration districts, 490 districts were systematically sampled. Among the sample, 9,636 unmarried men and women responded satisfactorily (response rate was 77.7%). Major findings of the survey are as follows:
(1) Marriage intentions
Nearly 90% of singles intend to get married in their life. But the percentage has decreased somewhat for both males and females since the previous survey. Among those who have marriage intention, about a half prefer delaying marriage to look for an ideal spouse, and the proportion has remarkably increased since the previous survey.
(2) Costs and benefits of marriage
The proportion of those favoring marriage over single life is 67% for males and 71% for females. On the other hand, the proportion of those favoring single life is 84% for males and 89% for females irrespective of their marriage intention. The main benefit of marriage is tranquillity of mind and the main cost is the lack of freedom in every day life.
(3) Obstacles to marriage
Nearly 70% of the unmarried mentioned obstacles to marriage. The main obstacle is the financial problem for a wedding ceremony and the starting of a new life.
(4) Desired marriage types: love match vs. arranged marriage
65% of males and 71% of females, among the unmarried, prefer love match as the process of marriage formation, while 33% of males and 28% of females accept arranged marriage by answering "no preference". The percentage of those preferring love matches has remarkably increased since the previous survey.
(5) Attitudes toward co-residence with parents after marriage
About 65% of males and 42% of females have intention to live with their own parents sometime after marriage. On the other hand, 58% of females respond that they do not mind living with parents-in-law. All these percentages have decreased since the previous survey.
(6) Friends of the opposite sex
About 47% of men and 39% of women do not have even friends of the opposite sex. It is observed that whether the single have friends of the opposite sex affects their intention of marriage especially among those who are aged 25 and over for both males and females.
(7) Desired number of children
The desired number of children for the unmarried women concentrates on two (57%) and three (26%). The mean number of desired family size is 2.2, which is the same as the level of actual completed family size for the Japanese married couples.
(8) Timing of first marriage
The data from both the Unmarried Youth Survey and the Married Couple Survey have been merged to analyze the timing of first marriage. The expected probability of first marriage by the mid-thirties is 0.77 for males and 0.87 for females. There are differentials in the timing of first marriage by education, mother's employment status, and parents' age at marriage, sib size, father's occupation, urban-rural residence and region.