Abstract
Marriage rates declined rapidly in Japan during the economic boom of the late 1980s. Existing theories of marriage, derived from an economic perspective, do not adequately explain the case of Japan. Applying Ogburn’s cultural lag theory, in this article we argue that Japanese women changed their views of gender roles during the boom and that male–female differences in role expectations might have contributed to marriage decline. Using the subsample data from the Japanese General Social Survey 2005 (n = 809), we analyze gender gaps in views of gender roles and find that the gap is larger for the boom cohort than for the subsequent (bust) cohort. We argue for the inclusion of Ogburn’s concepts of cultural lag and adaptation in building a theory of marriage.
