A Quantitative Model of Non-Marriage and Fertility: Bargaining over Leisure

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Yanagimoto, Kazuharu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Yanagimoto, Kazuharu
author_facet Yanagimoto, Kazuharu
contents This paper introduces a new factor contributing to the decline in marriage and fertility: the growth of leisure technology. Over recent decades, high-income countries have experienced two notable shifts in household and family dynamics. First, there has been a significant decline in marriage rates and fertility. Second, time has increasingly been allocated to leisure activities. This paper presents a unified model of marriage and fertility, incorporating intra-household bargaining dynamics. The model, calibrated using data from Japan between 2019 and 2023, is employed to assess the impact of leisure technology growth on marriage and fertility during 2005-2009. The findings highlight that leisure technology growth makes single life relatively more appealing compared to marriage and parenthood. The model explains 21.1% of the decline in marriage and 73.1% of the decrease in fertility.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_14758
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Quantitative Model of Non-Marriage and Fertility: Bargaining over Leisure
Yanagimoto, Kazuharu
General Economics
Economics
This paper introduces a new factor contributing to the decline in marriage and fertility: the growth of leisure technology. Over recent decades, high-income countries have experienced two notable shifts in household and family dynamics. First, there has been a significant decline in marriage rates and fertility. Second, time has increasingly been allocated to leisure activities. This paper presents a unified model of marriage and fertility, incorporating intra-household bargaining dynamics. The model, calibrated using data from Japan between 2019 and 2023, is employed to assess the impact of leisure technology growth on marriage and fertility during 2005-2009. The findings highlight that leisure technology growth makes single life relatively more appealing compared to marriage and parenthood. The model explains 21.1% of the decline in marriage and 73.1% of the decrease in fertility.
title A Quantitative Model of Non-Marriage and Fertility: Bargaining over Leisure
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14758