Marital Satisfaction and Work-Life Balance: A Viewpoint Indispensable to Mitigating Fertility Decline

Based on an analysis of panel data on Japanese married women, the
presentation will show that: 1) wives’ marital satisfaction and their
confidence in their husbands’ ability to provide emotional support and
financial security, a major component of marital satisfaction, affect
their desire to give childbirth; and 2) wives’ marital satisfaction and
their confidence in their husbands – though also subject to the
influence of household economic conditions such as the husband’s
income, household assets, and husband’s unemployment – are far more
affected by the way in which a married couple budgets its time, such as
hours spent in companionship and for conversation between husband and
wife, and husband’s share in childrearing. Based on the results of the
analysis, the paper discusses specific measures to achieve work-life
balance that enhances wives’ marital satisfaction.

Dr. Yamaguchi is currently Hanna Holborn Gray Professor at the
University of Chicago. His research focuses on hazard rate models for
competing life events and fertility decline in Japan. In 2003, he was
named by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) among the most
highly-cited authors in the social sciences. His most recent
publications include Class
Identification of Married Employed Women and Men in America
(with Y. Wang), American Journal of Sociology 198, 2003; Shoushika no kettei youin to
taisaku ni tsuite: Otto no yakuwari, shokuba no yakuwari, seifu no
yakuwari, shaikai no yakuwari [The Declining Fertility
Rate at the Below-Replacement Level: Determinants and Countermeasures
– The Roles of Husbands, Workplaces, the Government, and
Society], Japanese Journal of Household Economics 66: 2005; and Rationality of Tolerance: An
Insight into the Parent-Child Relationship, Rationality
and Society 18, 2006