Reduction of death rate has considerably affected on family life cycle in Japan. Average marriage period for couples of bridegroom of 28 years old and bride of 25, which was below 30 years at prewar time, is now about 46 years. Taking an example of father aged 60 and successing son aged 30, father's day will continue 19.5 years from now and the son will succeed his father at the age of 50, expecting to last for 29 years. Average future co-living period of such pairs as wife 50 and mother-in-law 80 has increased from 5.9 years to 8.2 years between 1955 and 1990, and average duration of wife's life after death of mother-in-law has increased from 21 years to 26 years during this period. Looking solely from the point of view of expectation of life at 60, 60 years of age in 1960 is equivalent to 67-68 years in 1990. The rate of those domiciliary elderly who need physical assistance or care increases rapidly with age. By applying such rates to 1990 Life Tables, the ratio of those female elderly aged 80 or over who need care to female population aged between 50 and 64 is 1 to 20 (1 to 13 if including such male elderly). Because of the reduction of the function to take care of the elderly at home, doubled by the extension of life expectancy, the issue of care for the elderly is anticipated to become more serious in future. There are many factors which make it especially difficult to solve the issue in Japan: women's participation in labor force and related problems, housing conditions, low level of welfare, overwhelming shortage of care manpower, etc. As for care manpower, the target number of home helpers stated at the Ten Year Strategy for Promotion of Health and Welfare of the Elderly, so called Gold Plan, is 100,000 by the year 2000. Even if this target is achieved, the number of home helpers per 100,000 population is still low compared to other developed countries. Therefore, in order to secure necessary manpower for care, revolutions in consciousness and paradigm of the Japanese society are required. To solve the issues on care for the elderly in a desirable way for both the elderly and society as a whole, the following approaches are thought to be very important: To enhance preventive policies; To expand social services which help the elderly to continue independent life; To develop a social system which provide support to those elderly who need heavy care.

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This study aims to clarify the determinants of Japanese attitudes toward fertility trends and policy for the possible input into the family policy. Multinomial logit model was applied to the data from the 1985 national household survey conducted by the Institute of Population Problems in Tokyo. The hypotheses with regard to demographic, socioeconomic and regional determinants of attitudes are formulated based partly on previous studies of similar European and American survey data. This study analyzes the determinants of contrasts between positive, negative and neutral attitudes toward four kinds of statements: (a) antinatalist one, (b) pronatalist one, (c) that Japanese couples attain their fertility goals and (d) that fertility policy is desirable. The results largely confirm the hypotheses: being female, young age, high income and rural residence have negative effects on antinatalism while old age, low income and metropolitan residence have positive effects; similar variables have the opposite effects on positive or negative attitudes toward pronatalism; old age, low education, rural residence and residence in Tohoku and Hokuriku regions are associated with positive attitudes toward the statement (c); being female and rural residence have positive effects on interventionism (d) while middle age, being never-married, high income and residence in Shikoku and Kyushu regions have negative effects; and being divorced or widowed, small sib size, low education, and farming are often associated with neutral attitudes.

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This paper examined the relationship between locus of control and such variables as unmarried woman's sexual activity, wife's experience of premarital conception, female marriage probability, postmarital contraception and first-conception probability in present-day Japan. On the basis of the Ninth Japanese National Fertility Survey data in 1987, logistic regression and proportional hazards model analyses confirmed some of our expectations such as: (1) externals are more likely to have a sexual intercourse among unmarried women aged 18-22 years, (2) the probability of marriage in internals is higher than that of externals among women, and (3) internal wives are less likely to use contraception before the first conception than externals. Although (2) and (3) seem to contradict the general prediction that the internal locus of control is associated with well-planned behaviours, the rationales for these predictions were presented. Contrary to our expectation, as far as married women are concerned, there is no difference in the likelihood of premarital conception by locus of control and we did not find any differential first-conception probability due to locus of control, either. The possible reasons for these gaps were discussed.

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This paper observes and analyzes labor supply behavior and work attitude of the youth and discusses the impact they may have had on the recent change in fertility rate in Japan. Various surveys show that a growing number of young workers have come to take atypical behavior in employment which differs in forms and attitude from the one seen in the traditional work place. Quitting and changing jobs, for instance, is easily conceived and practiced now than the old days. Regression analysis on the turnover function indicates that the change is not transitory but structural with different criteria about the job selection. It is rather clear now that the young people prefer nonpecuniary compensations, i. e, shorter working hours, to higher wages. The attitude toward work is changing clearly, too. The life style of the younger generation has become more leisure-oriented than work-oriented. The workaholic business world is not attractive and not everyone's preference anymore. The youth tend to take more individualistic view on work and jobs. The changes in the work behavior and life style of the youth may have affected the declining fertility rate. Under the influence of materialistic economic power, one seems to show a tendency to build a good single life and the utility of anything other than the pursuit of his/her own happiness becomes less important. Japanese youth marries late and the total fertility rate is 1.53 in 1991. This author sees, however, that the fertility rate in Japan will go upward gradually if and when the public and private sectors provide better environments to make child raising easier and as people will turn to see child bearing not from the rationale dictated in economics.

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