A recent government survey has prompted headlines saying that 35% of Japanese people aged 15 to 39 have no intention of marrying, with financial anxiety cited as the leading reason. But the survey cautions against interpreting its overall figures because of significant imbalances in the gender and age composition of respondents.
Published by the Children and Families Agency (CFA) on Aug. 31, the survey ran from May 20 to Aug. 5. This interim tally covers the 101,950 people who had responded by July 23, of whom 67,905 gave valid responses.
The CFA cautioned that particular care should be taken when citing the overall figures, as respondents were 36% male and 62% female, while the number of respondents varied significantly across age groups.
Among the 43,529 respondents who had never married, 38% said they would like to marry eventually, while 35% said they did not intend to marry. The majority (53%) said they simply didn’t want to. The most commonly cited obstacle was financial anxiety about maintaining a stable married life.
The report is another data point showing how marriage fatigue is impacting Japan even as its population declines. A private survey found that 80% of single Japanese people were exhausted by the search for a spouse.
The financial concerns surrounding marriage also feed into a wider debate over Japan’s declining marriage and birth rates. Japan’s already introduced a surcharge on national health insurance premiums to fund child-rearing stipends, which social media nicknamed the “Bachelor Tax.” It’s charged to everyone equally, but single and childless people get none of the money back, and many in Japan have called it an unfair burden on those who remain single.
Young women worry about unequal housework and child-rearing
Concerns that household chores and child-rearing responsibilities would fall unequally within a marriage were cited as a hurdle by 42% of women aged 15 to 19, compared with 34% of those aged 20 to 24 and 24% of those aged 35 to 39. Among men, the figures showed a similar pattern, falling from 31.8% among those aged 15 to 19 to 13.4% among those aged 35 to 39.
The concern was cited by more than twice as many teenage boys as men in their late 30s.
The concerns about post-marital happiness aren’t unfounded. Japanese news has previously discussed “masquerade couples,” or kamen fūfu (仮面夫婦), who remain legally married while living largely separate lives. A 2025 survey of 3,000 married Japanese adults found that one in five considered themselves part of such a couple, with unequal sharing of housework and childcare among the reasons cited for emotional separation.
For women in their 30s, finding a partner is a bigger concern
Among those who said they did not intend to marry, the obstacles named beyond simply not wanting to marry included less free time (27%), nobody they would want to marry (25%), and financial anxiety about being able to maintain a stable married life (23%).
Across all unmarried respondents, the share who said there was nobody they would want to marry rose with age among women, from 32.6% among those aged 20 to 24 to 38.6% among those aged 30 to 34 and 41.0% among those aged 35 to 39. In every age group, the figure was higher among women than men, reaching 28.9% among men aged 35 to 39.
The difficulty of finding a partner is not necessarily the same as not wanting a relationship. Some women engage in “solo weddings,” celebrating themselves with a wedding-style photo shoot either without a groom or with a two-dimensional one. The trend reflects a growing acceptance among some women that they may remain single, even as the search for a partner becomes increasingly difficult.
Regarding priorities, only 10% of respondents in the CFA survey who had never married said getting married was their top priority. By contrast, 50% said they prioritized leisure and hobbies over marriage, making it the top response across all age groups for both men and women. The survey did not ask whether prioritizing hobbies was a reason they did not intend to marry.
Others prioritized their own physical and mental well-being (37%) and securing or maintaining a stable income or job (36%).
Unmarried people in their 30s report lower life satisfaction and more loneliness
On a 0-to-10 life-satisfaction scale, unmarried men aged 35 to 39 averaged 4.62, compared with 6.25 for married men in the same age group. Among women, the averages were 4.77 for unmarried respondents and 6.17 for married respondents.
The pattern matches earlier findings. Newsweek Japan’s Maita Toshihiko, drawing on World Values Survey data collected between 2017 and 2022, found that Japanese men report particularly low levels of well-being if they remain single.
In the CFA survey, loneliness showed a similar pattern. Among men aged 35 to 39, 70.5% of unmarried respondents said they sometimes or always felt they had no personal connections, compared with 53.5% of married men in the same age group.
These figures are a single-point snapshot and cannot establish whether marital status affects well-being or whether differences in well-being affect people’s likelihood of marrying. The survey’s imbalances in the gender and age composition of respondents also apply to these figures.
Question: do you like UJ's independent coverage of Japan? Our writers are supported by our members. Join Unseen Japan Insider to get bonus content every week, an ad-free website, and access to our large and growing Insider archive.We manage to keep most of our content free thanks to the generosity of our members. Join Unseen Japan Insider and you'll get access to new, exclusive UJ member content weekly, an ad-free website, and access to our large and growing Insider archive.
No directly comparable trend line
The closest, though not directly comparable, national benchmark is the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research’s 16th National Fertility Survey, conducted in June 2021. In that survey, 17.3% of men and 14.6% of women aged 18 to 34 said they did not intend to marry at any point in their lives.
The comparison has several important limitations. The 2021 survey asked about never marrying for life, rather than having no intention of marrying, used a different age range, and was based on a random national sample with a 55.9% valid response rate, rather than an online monitor panel.
The 2021 survey did, however, show a decline in the proportion of respondents who said they intended to marry eventually: 81.4% of men, down from 85.7%, and 84.3% of women, down from 89.3%.
The politics of the CFA survey
The findings come as the Children and Families Agency faces calls for its abolition from Japan’s political right, and reactions to the survey on social media quickly became part of that debate.
The agency says it will continue breaking down the data by age and region, incorporate the findings into a broader youth policy plan, and publish a final report by the end of fiscal 2026, in March 2027.
A separate question in the same survey found that more than half of respondents across all age and gender groups supported age-based restrictions on social media use. Support was higher among women than among men, and lowest among the age groups that would actually be subject to the restrictions.
Keep reading
Sources
若年世代に関する総合的な調査（若者10万人の総合調査）（令和8年度） こども家庭庁
若者10万人の総合調査（ウェブアンケート調査・途中経過） こども家庭庁
「結婚するつもりない」35％ 収入や環境変化に不安、若者調査 共同通信
未婚の若者35％「結婚するつもりない」 理由は「趣味の時間を優先」 こども家庭庁調査 産経新聞
若者10万人アンケート調査「結婚するつもりはない」約35％ こども家庭庁 テレビ朝日系（ANN）
未婚若者の約3人に1人が「結婚するつもりはない」 こども家庭庁 若者10万人を対象にした調査実施 SNSの年齢制限については5割超が肯定的 TBS NEWS DIG
若者10万人調査「結婚するつもりない」35％、未婚の30代男女は生活満足度低く孤立感が高い傾向も～こども家庭庁 日テレNEWS NNN
2021年社会保障・人口問題基本調査＜結婚と出産に関する全国調査＞ 第16回出生動向基本調査 結果の概要 国立社会保障・人口問題研究所
こども・若者総合調査（令和7年度） こども家庭庁