The Institution for Social and Policy Studies Population Studies Workshop presents
James Raymo, Professor of Sociology and Henry Wendt III ’55 Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University:
“Divorce, Remarriage, and Fertility in Japan.”
In this study, we quantify the contributions of divorce, remarriage, and childbearing within higher-order marriages to overall fertility in Japan (as measured by period TFR). We use data from the 14th, 15th, and 16th National Fertility Surveys, conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research in 2010, 2015, and 2021, respectively. Using all person-month observations that fall within a given window of calendar time, we calculate TFR as the weighted sum of age-specific, marital status-specific fertility rates. Making sequential counterfactual assumptions about the availability of divorce and remarriage as life options, we show that divorce reduces TFR by up to 5% whereas remarriage and subsequent childbearing increases TFR by 6-10% (relative to counterfactual worlds in which divorce and remarriage, respectively, were not possible). We also demonstrate that, not surprisingly, recent trends in first marriage are far more important for understanding TFR levels than are trends in divorce and remarriage.
James Raymo is Professor of Sociology and Henry Wendt III ’55 Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. At Princeton, he is also the director of the Office of Population Research, the founding director of the Global Japan Lab, and the faculty director of the Strategic Partnership between Princeton and the University of Tokyo. Raymo received his Ph.D. in 2000 from the University of Michigan and was on the faculty in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 19 years before moving to Princeton. Raymo is a social demographer whose research focuses on documenting and understanding the causes and potential consequences of demographic changes associated with low fertility and population aging, with a particular focus on Japan. His published research includes analyses of marriage timing, divorce, recession and fertility, marriage and women’s health, single mothers’ well-being, living alone, family change and social inequality, employment and health at older ages, and regional differences in health at older ages. He currently serves as a co-director of the international community of scholars called Research on East Asian Demography and Inequality, on the editorial boards of leading journals, and was as the vice-president of the Population Association of America in 2023.