This paper examines the impacts of preference that have been formed in childhood on the current number of births. We especially focus on the preference for housing conditions. For this purpose, we argue the difference in housing conditions between childhood and current living place. Our findings are (1) the size of rooms per person is positively correlated with the number of births; however (2) controlling for housing conditions in childhood, the difference in housing conditions between childhood and present rather than current housing conditions has a significantly positive effect on the number of births; and (3) this difference has no significant impact on the decision of marriage. These results suggest that as the flow of population from rural areas to urban areas diminishes, housing problems gradually have a small effect on the low fertility.
The purpose of our study is to analyze the future housing demand for the baby-boomers who live in Osaka metropolitan area. The followings are the result:(1) Osaka metropolitan area consists of 76 cities.(2) There was so called “Housing Sugoroku” that the population has dispersed to the suburb area as the population in the urban area is overpopulated after the war.(3) The miss matching in houses appears because many baby-boomers need not have big houses but most of them tend to live in the same houses, which mostly have large spaces.(4) Now, the generations after the baby-boomers demand larger housing spaces especially in the suburb area. In conclusion, our government needs to make better housing plans to promote relocation of dwelling.