{"id":236104,"date":"2026-04-29T03:10:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T08:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/firehorse-superstition-helps-uncover-why-womens-education-may-not-drive-japans-fertility-decline"},"modified":"2026-04-29T03:10:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T08:10:15","slug":"firehorse-superstition-helps-uncover-why-womens-education-may-not-drive-japans-fertility-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/firehorse-superstition-helps-uncover-why-womens-education-may-not-drive-japans-fertility-decline","title":{"rendered":"Firehorse superstition helps uncover why women\u2019s education may not drive Japan\u2019s fertility decline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/firehorse-superstition-helps-uncover-why-womens-education-may-not-drive-japans-fertility-decline3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The rapidly declining marriage and fertility rates across developed East Asian societies strain pension and health care systems, threaten economic growth, and reshape entire societies. To tackle this issue, governments in Japan and across East Asia have invested heavily in pronatalist measures, but often with limited success. For instance, Japan\u2019s government has repeatedly expanded childcare subsidies and parental leave provisions, yet the total fertility rate hit a record low of 1.20 in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>A common narrative in media commentary, policy circles, and even within families is that women are \u201ctoo educated\u201d or \u201ctoo career-focused\u201d to marry and have children. However, the exact causal relationship between women\u2019s education level and family formation is not well understood.<\/p>\n<p>To fill this knowledge gap, a team of researchers from Japan and Singapore, led by Associate Professor Rong Fu from the Faculty of Commerce, Waseda University, Japan, used a novel quasi-experimental approach to understand the relationship between education, fertility, and marriage in Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The rapidly declining marriage and fertility rates across developed East Asian societies strain pension and health care systems, threaten economic growth, and reshape entire societies. To tackle this issue, governments in Japan and across East Asia have invested heavily in pronatalist measures, but often with limited success. For instance, Japan\u2019s government has repeatedly expanded childcare [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,32,1490,1495,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-education","category-government","category-health","category-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}