Abstract
Decades of family studies in the United States have revealed low educational andsocioeconomic attainment and the reproduction of poverty and inequality among the children and adolescents of divorced parents, as well as the existence of intergenerational transmission of divorce. However, there has been little research into these phenomena in Japan, especially the intergenerational transmission of divorce. In recent years, the divorce rate has increased; moreover, the poverty rates experienced by divorced single-mother households in Japan cannot be sufficiently reduced by the social welfare system alone. If the intergenerational transmission of divorce exists in Japan, households with children in which the parents divorce will mostly become single-mother households, and this will also be true for the second generation（the children of divorce）; this intergenerational transmission of divorce can be associated with the reproduction of poverty. This study examines the intergenerational transmission of divorce in Japan, as well as mediating factors such as lower educational attainment and early marriage, which have been identified as factors of intergenerational transmission of divorce in former studies.
Using data from the Japanese Life Course Panel Surveys（JLPS）for the Youth（JLPS-Y）and the Middle-Aged（JLPS-M）, the analyses revealed that experiencing parental divorce had a significant positive association with divorce among the offspring, confirming that intergenerational transmission of divorce among both men and women exists in Japan. This transmission effect was partially mediated by lower educational attainment and the early marriage of the offspring. The existence of intergenerational transmission of divorce suggests that families that experience divorce and become single-mother households will lead to a second generation of single-mother households, both of which could experience and reproduce poverty in subsequent generations.
