Population policy has been much concerned with fertility questions. In Western countries, population questions were heavily conditioned by the almost uninterrupted fall of the birth rate from the late nineteenth century until the end of World War II. In the 1930's, the net reproduction rates for many developed societies were below 1.0. A variety of pro-family and natalist measures were suggested and recommended, in order to do such things as raise the net reproduction rate to at least unity. However, since the 1940's, attitudes have changed considerably. There arose strongly determined attitudes against the understandably high rates of population growth in less developed nations. Population control and ideas for small family norms have been diffused all over the world, with few exceptions. Population policy seems to have been exclusively understood as policy regarding fertility questions, whether it has been pro-natalist or not. However, the 1974 World Population Conference precisely examined and considered population policy in every detail, defining its scope in a broad way, including not only fertility control, but also mortality, migration, age structure, and so on, and also emphasized that it should be incorporated into overall national development policy as integral part. At the beginning, population questions and policies in Japan were discussed. Pioneering work by Teijiro Ueda in the prewar days, and by Ryozaburo Minami in the post-war period were mentioned. Then, great attention was given to the scientific activities toward population policies which were conducted by the United Nations. Comprehensive analysis on population policies and movements in Europe by D. V. Glass, B. Berelson's work, and also E. D. Driver's theoretical study were discussed.

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The economics of fertility has produced many theoretical and empirical works since Becker's seminal article in 1960. Some tests support the theory and some others reject it. This paper aimed to test the relevance of the Chicago model and the Easterlin hypothesis in explaining the fertility movements in postwar Japan. The Chicago model the author of this paper used here explicitly expresses the different fertility response to changes in men's wages in households with and without a wife in employment, and the fertility response of a working wife to changes in women's wages. The results of the test seemed to be statistically good, but the conditions of sign expected a priori were not satisfied, so that the Chicago model was rejected. On the other hand, the Easterlin hypothesis was applied more successfully. Four variants of measures of relative economic status were adopted. One of them was the relative cohort size, the movement of which did not coincide with that of fertility. The other three variants of relative wage were considerably well fitted with fertility changes. According to these findings, fertility decline after the baby boom, subsequent low fertility and the second baby boom, and the recent decline in fertility, can be explained by the Easterlin hypothesis, that is, by the betterment or the worsening of intergenerational relative economic status. Further, it was suggested that an upswing in fertility in the near future could not be expected under the sustained low economic growth since the oil crisis.

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After having maintained about replacement level for some 15 years, Japanese fertility has been declining since 1973. The application of decomposition technique to the decline in the crude birth rate between 1973 and 1980 clarified that 40% of the total change in CBR is explained by changes in age composition, 50% by the decline in proportions of couples married, and 10% by a short-term decline in marital fertility. The change in age composition in this period refers to the abrupt shrinkage of the younger cohort, which is most exposed to the prospect of marriage: those aged in then 20's. This is, in turn, an echo of the precipitous decline in birth just after the short-term "baby boom" in postwar years. If we take into account the historical steadiness of marriage throughout Japan, the decline in the proportions of those married would seem to be the postponement of marriage without any rise in the celibacy rate. Several factors are presumably conducive to the recent marriage squeeze, but the recent rise in high school and college enrollment rates for both men and women appears to be most responsible for it. It remains to be studied whether the disequilibration of the sex ratio among marriageable cohorts due to the abrupt change of the cohort size, the decline in substantive wage rates since the oil crisis of 1973, or changes in the social mechanism for selecting spouses (i. e., the decrease in arranged marriages), is causally relevent to the marriage squeeze. The cause for the short-term decline in marital fertility is difficult to discern. According to several recent fertility surveys of married women, there has been little change in completed fertility, fertility goals (measured by the total intended number of children), and fertility control behavior (which is measured by the proportion of contraceptive usage or induced abortion, the timing in the initiation of contraceptive usage, and the contraceptive methods used). Thus, the short-term decline in marital fertility, if any, is inferred to be temporary.

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The period fertility rates in Japan have been continuously declining since 1974, i. e., the crude birth rate declined from 19.4 per thousand population in 1973 to 13.6 in 1980, and the total period fertility rate declined from 2.14 to 1.74 in the same period. In these periods, cohort fertility rates remained constant. For example, the average number of children ever born per married woman aged 30-39 declined from 4.0 in 1950 to 2.16 in 1970; during the 1970's these figures remained at around 2.2, and the average number of children born during the marriage duration did not significantly change. To examine this relationship between the decline in period fertility and the constant cohort fertility, the author reconstructed and projected the total number of births and the total fertility rate from 1961 to 2000, using models of nuptiality, marriage dissolution, and marital cohort fertility, based on (a) the annual number of brides, by age at marriage, from 1947 to 1978, and the estimated number of brides for 1979-2000, using this set of nuptiality rates of 1978 and the data for never-married women from the 1975 census, (b) the rate of couples with surviving marriages, and (c) the marital cohort fertility rates under marriage duration, and age of marriage for brides. The results in Case I were based on (a-1) the annual number of brides, (b-1) a set of marriage duration rates, and (c-1) a set of marriage-duration specific-birth rates. In Case II, for estimating total fertility rates we used (a-2) the number of brides by age at marriage and same data of Case I. In Case III, we used (c-2) marital fertility by age for those married from 1952-62 as a basis for the whole period. The difference between both the estimated number of births and total period fertility rates and the actual number based on vital statistics are very small for the period of 1961-1973. According to the results of Case IV (assuming a completed family size for married woman, CFS, 2.4 for the whole period), Case V (CFS 2.2), and Case VI (CFS 2.0), the total number of births would decrease until 1990, and then it would increase. On the other hand, the total period fertility rate would increase in the early 1980's and will become stable from the mid-1980's to the mid-1990's under constant nuptiality rates and marriage dissolution rates.

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In his previous work, the author analyzed the applicability of the experience of early Japanese modernization to the contemporary developing regions of Asia, with the aid of a quantitative framework reflecting the features of Meiji economic development. In the present study, however, an attempt from the opposite angle has been made: drawing upon a quantitative framework built for developing Asian countries, the author has compared them with Meiji Japan. A model of a recursive type has been formulated on the basis of data from the fourteen developing countries in Asia circa 1970. One of the major simulation results of this model is that the economic structure observed at the take-off stage of Japan's development is considerably different from that in operation at present in the developing regions of Asia. This finding justifies the reason why a number of development economists have described Japan's take-off in development as "miraculous". Furthermore, not only the economic structure, but also the demographic condition of Meiji Japan was substantially different from that of contemporay developing nations in Asia. The primary source of the uniqueness of Japan's demographic changes in her early development stage was the decline in mortality. This reflects the fact that while Meiji Japan experienced a gradual decline in mortality due to its economic development, mortality decline in contemporary developing countries has been induced via modern medical technology and public health measures imported from more developed nations. Another significant finding is that the mechanism of fertility reduction observed in Meiji Japan does appear to be extremely comparable to that in operation in the developing countries of Asia.

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In order to clarify the features of migration according to regions, this author aims to use several indicators. For measuring quantities of migration, it is possible to use 'the total net migration rate' and 'the total gross migration' rate calculated upon sex-age specific net migration rates for the regions. And for defining patterns of migration, it is possible to devise 'general migration patterns' and 'migration patterns for major age groups.' In this report, the total net migration rate and general migration patterns are examined by shi (city), cho (town) and son (village) in Miyagi prefecture for two periods, 1960-65 and 1970-75. The indicators are calculated for each sex and region. In the attached table only male indicators are shown. Comparing the two periods, it is recognized that the number of regions which have a positive total net migration rate definitely increased in the latter period, and also the absolute value of the total net migration rate increased. In addition, the number of regions which have pattern A and B increassed in the latter period. In the general migration pattern, pattern A means that the highest net migration rate is found in the younger age group (less than 40 years) and also that the lowest net migration rate is found in the younger age group. Pattern B means that the highest net migration rate is found in the younger age group, and the lowest net migration rate is found in older age group (more than 40 years).

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The rank-size rule for the population of cities is expressed by log P=-a log R+b where P is the population of a city, R is the rank of the population of the city P, and a and b are parameters. In this paper, I tried to apply this rule to the populations of each of 9 regions in Japan for 1960, 1965, 1970, and 1975. The rule was able to be successfully applied to those populations. Also, I was able to conclude that the system of population of cities in Japan was so homogeneous that the distribution of the population in cities in each of the regions of this country could be described by this same rank-size rule. Incidentally, when we try to perform this kind of examination, we should consider whether the rank-size rule can be simultaneously applied to the populations of cities within each region in a country. Therefore, I also discussed this problem theoretically. As a result of the theoretical consideration, I found the conditions for application of the rank-size rule to the populations of cities in each of the regions in a country, and I called the characteristic found in the rank-size rule the "decomposability" of this rule.

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