TOKYO, July 30 — The story of Japan’s birth crisis begins with the women at its centre, and the numbers tell a stark tale. In 2023, the female labour force participation rate reached a record 73.6 percent, yet that headline figure masks a persistent pattern known as the ‘M-curve’—the steep drop in employment many women experience during their child-rearing years. For those involved, the arithmetic of daily life is unforgiving. The gender wage gap stood at 22 percent in 2023, one of the widest among OECD nations. That gap is not an abstract statistic; it shapes decisions about whether to have a child, or when.
Marriage and the Declining Birth Rate
At the heart of the low fertility is the institution of marriage itself. The average age of first marriage for women rose to 29.6 in 2023, and for men to 31.2. The number of marriages fell to 504,000 that year—the lowest since the end of World War II. This matters because in Japan, nearly all births occur within marriage. The rate of extramarital births is less than 2 percent, compared with over 40 percent in many Western countries. For women who remain single or marry late, the window for childbearing narrows. The story here is not one of personal choice alone; it is a structural lock that ties motherhood to marriage in a society where both are increasingly delayed or foregone.
Womenomics and Its Limits
What unfolded under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ‘womenomics’ initiative, which ran from 2013 to 2020, was a push to bring more women into the workforce. The policy succeeded in raising female employment. But it did not raise fertility, which continued to decline. For the women who gained jobs, the trade-offs were clear: longer hours, less time for family, and a labour market that still penalised motherhood. The initiative increased the number of women working, but it did not address the M-curve, nor the wage gap, nor the cultural expectation that a woman must choose between a career and a child. At its heart, the policy treated women as economic units rather than as people navigating a complex set of pressures.
The data from 2023—the record participation, the persistent wage gap, the dwindling marriages—makes plain that the birth crisis is not a single problem but a knot of them. Japan’s government has tried incentives, childcare subsidies, and workplace reforms. None have reversed the trend. For those involved, the stakes are existential: a shrinking population, a strained social safety net, and a society that has yet to find a way to make motherhood and a career compatible. What to watch next is whether any new policy can break the M-curve, or whether the pattern will hold.
