The survey also points to a decline in the average difference in age between a husband and wife. The ratio of marriages where the wife is older than her husband has nearly doubled over the past 10 years to reach 23.2% of the total. The percentage of same-age couples is also on the rise. Couples where the husband is older, once the overwhelming majority, have dropped by 10% in the last five years to account for only 60% of all marriages today. This trend is closely tied to the decline in arranged marriages, which are generally carried out between older men and younger women. As one sociologist points out, "The selection of partners based on the husband's taking a dominant role in the relationship is vanishing fast. The numbers show that an equal partnership--where a husband and wife enjoy work, relaxation, and life in general together--is now the norm."

Plan Ahead; Have a Daughter
Dropping birthrates are troubling developed countries around the world, and the problem is especially serious in Japan. The average age of Japanese at the time of their first marriage is now 28.4 years for men and 26.1 for women--an increase from a decade ago of 0.2 years and 0.8 years, respectively. This is giving rise to fears of a further drop in the childbearing rate and an even more top-heavy population pyramid. The ratio of young couples (married for less than 10 years) who choose to have children is dropping. Fully 42.6% of couples married for four years or less report no children (up from 38.9% five years ago), while those married from five to nine years without children now account for 10.3% of all couples in that range (up from 8.6%). Couples married for less than five years give the ideal number of children as an average 2.33 children, but the number of kids they plan to have as only 2.12. Almost 40% of the couples explain this gap between their ideal and actual situations with the fact that "child-rearing is expensive."

Amid this trend toward fewer children, when asked whether they would prefer a boy or girl as an only child, fully three-quarters of couples opted for a daughter. This preference for girls shows a marked increase from 15 years ago, when the numbers were more or less equal. Previously the common consensus was that a daughter would be lost to marriage; but the recent conventional wisdom sees strong ties as continuing between parents and a daughter even after the latter gets married. A son, on the other hand, is now seen as facing the prospect of transfer to a distant work location. It may well be that as Japan approaches its silver years, the aging generations are looking to their daughters for their senior care needs, rather than to their sons--who are likely to leave the nursing duties up to their wives anyway.