Contingent Work Rising: Implications for the Timing of Marriage in Japan
| Date | 01 October 2015 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12224 |
| Published date | 01 October 2015 |
M P University of Oklahoma
A K R R. R University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill∗
Contingent Work Rising: Implications for the
Timing of Marriage in Japan
Employment has become increasingly precari-
ous in developed countries, meaning that, for
many young adults, jobs provide neither ben-
ets nor security, more work is part time, and
employers are increasingly hiring workers from
temporary help agencies and contract compa-
nies rather than as employees of their own com-
pany. These changes in employment relations
have profound effects on gender roles and on
family transitions of young adults, especially
young men and in particular in countries such
as Japan, where there are rigid family norms
and the male-breadwinner tradition still pre-
vails. The authors examined the effects of the
experience of non-regular work on the timing of
marriage and whether this differs by sex. Using
recent life history data from Japan, they found
that men working in non-regular jobs are espe-
cially likely to postpone marriage. The impli-
cations of the growth of precarious work for
changes in work and family institutions in Japan
are discussed.
Major societal changes, including the spread of
globalization; the rise of technology, which has
Department of Sociology, Universityof Oklahoma, 780 Van
Vleet Oval, 331 Kaufman Hall, Norman, OK 73019
(piotrow@ou.edu).
∗Department of Sociology, Universityof North Carolina,
Hamilton Hall No. 32, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210.
This article was edited by Yingchun Ji.
Key Words: event history analysis, Japan, marriage, precar-
ious work.
facilitated the offshore outsourcing of work; the
weakening of labor unions; and the spread of
neoliberal economic doctrines have led to the
growth of precarious and non-regular employ-
ment in the industrialized countries of Asia as
well as others throughout the world (see Beck,
2000; Kalleberg, 2009, 2011; Kalleberg & Hewi-
son, 2013; Webster, Lambert, & Bezuidenhout,
2008). This structural change is represented by
the expansion of contingent,ornon-regular,
work arrangements such as temporary, contract,
and part-time work characterized by insecure
and unstable employment, few opportunities for
career advancement, and relatively low earn-
ings and benets. Non-regular employment has
pervasive consequences for the nature of work,
workplaces, and peoples’ work experiences; for
gender roles; for non-work-related individual
(e.g., mental stress, ill physical health, educa-
tion) and social (e.g., family, community) out-
comes; and for political instability (De Witte,
1999; Standing, 2011).
The impacts of the growth of non-regular
work have been especially severefor young peo-
ple, who disproportionately make up the ranks
of the unemployed and underemployed (Euro-
stat, 2013) and are facing considerable hurdles
in launching their work careers (Fong & Tsut-
sui, 2013; Hamaguchi & Ogino, 2011; Shikata,
2012; Yu, 2012). With young adults bearing the
brunt of difcult and uncertain labor market con-
ditions, their ability to marry and have children
likely is negatively affected. The consequences
of the growth of non-regular employment
are likely to be especially problematic in
countries such as Japan, with its entrenched
Journal of Marriage and Family 77 (October 2015): 1039–1056 1039
DOI:10.1111/jomf.12224
1040 Journal of Marriage and Family
male-breadwinner–female-homemaker tradition
in which men’s and women’s roles are fairly
rigidly determined and where the institutional
context prescribes well-dened, young adult
transitions between social locations, especially
those from school to work and work to marriage.
There is growing evidence that Japan, a coun-
try now in the third decade of the so-called “lost
decade” of economic stagnation resulting from
the bursting of the asset price bubble and other
economic difculties in the years following the
nancial crisis of the 1990s, has been especially
affected by the growth of non-regular employ-
ment. Japan has experienced not only economic
change but also a substantial drop in the pro-
portion of young people marrying and having
children (Atoh, Kandiah, & Ivanov,2004; Jones,
2007; Tsuya, in press), which has serious impli-
cations for many facets of the Japanese popula-
tion, including the future of its labor force and
its age structure. Late marriage and low fertil-
ity also have negative implications for govern-
ment social policies, which rely on a supportive
family (formerly the de facto welfare system in
Japan). With low wages and limited social sup-
port, the working poor risk becoming entrenched
in poverty (e.g., A. Allison, 2013). The term
freeters has been applied to those who hold only
temporary or part-time jobs; they have become a
growing part of the stagnant Japanese economy.
Despite much discussion in the recent liter-
ature on the probable impact of experiencing
non-regular work on family formation in Japan
and elsewhere, behavioral empirical evidence on
the hypothesized relationships has been lacking.
Modena and Sabatini (2012), using data from
Italy, examined fertility intentions (not behav-
ior) for married couples, with an average age
of 41 for men and 37 for women (hence late in
their childbearing years). They found a negative
effect of precarious work on women’s fertility
intentions, but not for men’s. Although fertility
intentions can be changeable, this Italian study
is consistent with the theoretical expectations
involving employment.
In this study we addressed this gap by
examining whether non-regular work leads to
marriage postponement and whether this differs
for men and women. Using life history data
from Japan, we assessed the impact of working
in non-regular jobs on the transition to rst
marriage for young men and women. We found
that men (more so than women) employed in
non-regular jobs were more likely to postpone
marriage, which is consistent with general
theoretical expectations as well as patterns of
gender roles and family formation in Japan.
We rst discuss how structural changes in the
Japanese economy and employment relations
have affected the timing of marriage and family
formation. We then describe our data, methods,
and results. Finally, we discuss the implications
of our analyses for a broader understanding of
the impacts of work-related economic and social
changes on family outcomes.
N- W I I
F F J
Non-regular employment contrasts with the nor-
mative conception of work that was dominant
in Japan and other industrial nations in the
decades after World War II: a standard employ-
ment relationship (SER) that involved perma-
nent, full-time work directed by an employer at
the employer’s place of business and with reg-
ular pay and benets. The SER was most fre-
quently implemented in larger organizations and
industrial production and was also the basis of
the East Asian Social Welfare Model (Holliday,
2000). In this productivist model, social wel-
fare rights and protections reinforced the pro-
ductive elements in society; hence, men in the
favored core manufacturing industries in Japan
received substantial benets from their employ-
ers, including assurances of lifetime employ-
ment, a seniority-based wage and promotion
system, and extensive benets to ensure the
well-being of workers and their families. Indi-
viduals outside the core employment system, in
contrast, were forced to depend on other sources
of social protection, such as the family.
The viability of the SER was facilitated
by the economic growth and relatively young
labor forces of the postwar period. More-
over, it was mainly limited to male employees
because it was able to function in large part
due to a male-breadwinner–female-homemaker
model of the family (see Vosko, 2010) that
was associated with relatively stable families
and higher fertility rates in the post-World
War II period (Esping-Andersen, 1999). This
system made it difcult for women to reenter
the regular job labor market following a period
of non-employment in which they gave birth to
and raised children (Blossfeld & Hofmeister,
2006), since entry into SERs tended to occur at
the time of the school-to-work transition.
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