Marriage, Divorce, and Live Birth and Stillbirth by Legitimacy in Japan after World War II

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to re-evaluate population dynamics, especially marriage, divorce, and live birth and stillbirth by legitimacy, in Japan for the period after World War II, between 1947 and 1994 in particular, following our previous report on the similarly designed analyses for the period before World War II. Marriage rate between 1947 and 1949 was estimated at around 70 to 80 per 1, 000 unmarried women over age 15. In 1950's, the rate suddenly dropped, and then gradually increased until early 1970's. Form mid-1970's to late 1980's the rate constantly decreased and recently it has reached around 35. Estimated divorce rate showed a clear decrease from about five to three per 1, 000 married women from 1947 to 1963. Then, it raised again to around six in 1994. Estimated illegitimate birth rate showed a clear decrease from around nine to less than one per 1, 000 unmarried women over age 15 in the study period. Ratio of illegitimate births to all births once clearly decreased until mid-1960's and then turned to increase. Sex ratio of illegitimate births was smaller than that of legitimate births in the bulk of the study period. It was considered that the trends of marriage, divorce and birth by legitimacy were affected by Japanese old marriage registration custom. Estimated illegitimate stillbirth rate (after the eighth month of gestation) was much higher than legitimate stillbirth rate over the observation period . The former increased from 1951 to about 1960 and then turned to decrease whereas the latter was almost constant until about 1960 and then turned to decrease. It was suspected that these trends of stillbirth rates in 1950's were partly caused by some deaths of infants being registered as stillbirth.