Men said they also enjoy personal freedoms, but many additionally said other motivators for remaining single included concerns over job insecurity and not being able to earn enough money to sustain a family.
dw.com
dw.com
Japan's birth rate has been in decline since the 1970s, but the problem has now become far more acute and the government appears to be struggling to devise ways to halt the decline.
While women opting to have fewer children is a global phenomenon, Japan's aging population and its lack of mass immigration makes sustaining social security and the workforce a particularly difficult task.
Sociology professor Masahiro Yamada from Tokyo's Chuo University told AFP that the norm of single people living with their parents until marriage means there is less immediate pressure to find a partner.
Although long-term financial security with a husband or wife is seen as important, the difficulty of finding affordable housing adds to the incentive to stay with mum and dad, he said.
Shigeki Matsuda, a sociology professor at Chukyo University in central Japan, blames the country's falling marriage rate on a phenomenon known as "hypergamy".
"Japanese women tend to seek men with stable employment and education levels" higher than them, he explained.
"Japanese women tend to seek men with stable employment and education levels" higher than them, he explained.
Anecdotal evidence from the match-making party seemed to bear this out, a small queue of women forming to exchange contact details with one of the men who, it emerged, had the highest income of the group.
Six out of 10 men aged between 30-34 with a classic "salaryman" job were married as of 2017, whereas only 22 percent of male contract workers the same age had a wife.
54.6% of Japanese men and 62.6% of women in their 30s were married.
Nearly 1 in 4 men and 1 in 7 women in Japan were yet to be married at age 50.
Japan has one of the highest life expectancies in the world; in 2020, nearly one in 1,500 people in Japan were age 100 or older, according to government data.
Japan’s high cost of living, limited space and lack of child care support in cities make it difficult to raise children, meaning fewer couples are having kids. Urban couples are also often far from extended family who could help provide support.
Some point to the pessimism young people in Japan hold toward the future, many frustrated with work pressure and economic stagnation.
The average real annual household income declined from 6.59 million yen ($50,600) in 1995 to 5.64 million yen ($43,300) in 2020.
South Korea recently broke its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate, with data from November 2022 showing a South Korean woman will have an average of 0.79 children in her lifetime.
Meanwhile, China’s population shrank in 2022 for the first time since the 1960s, adding to its woes as it struggles to recover from the pandemic.
“Being single for a lifetime is no longer a rare course of life,” said Akiko Kitamura, a senior researcher at the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute who specializes in issues of marriage and childbirth.
Roughly 40% of Japan’s labour force consists of temporary workers today, making unstable employment conditions more common than decades ago.
11.58 million college students are expected to graduate this year in China.
“It's not unfanthomable for college graduates to wait tables in restaurants.”
“It's not unfanthomable for college graduates to wait tables in restaurants.”
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