Falling birthrates and people marrying later in life, if ever, are common occurrences in many industrial nations.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>But there are stark differences between other industrialized nations in the number of common-law couples and kids born out of wedlock.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>In Japan, discrimination against illegitimate offspring is institutionalized, and single moms with kids often get little in the way of official financial aid.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Young people in Japan also find themselves less inclined to move away from their parents, unlike their Western counterparts, who tend to venture out and stand on their own economic feet at an earlier age.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Some singles in Japan meanwhile enjoy the freedoms of not tying the knot.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>A 36-year-old employee at a major airline figures his views are unique -- he is still single because he only wants to live with a partner, not tie the knot.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>'Marriage is just part of the social system,' said the graduate of a prestigious national university. 'I value freedom. I don't like being bound by anyone and I also don't want to bind anyone.'</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Statistics show, however, that most single Japanese women feel marriage is preferable to a common-law existence.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>A 2002 government survey found that 60.3 percent of 3,494 single women aged 18 to 34 said people should marry if they want to live together. Men are even more conservative, with the corresponding figure for the 3,897 single male respondents at 71.6 percent.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Experts say that in Japan, more than in other countries, couples have a greater tendency to get hitched if the woman gets pregnant.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry estimated that in 2000, 25 percent of couples' firstborn babies -- some 150,000 -- were born soon after a marriage prompted by the pregnancy.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>In Northern and Western Europe and North America, common-law couples are better inclined to support each other, both emotionally and economically, in part because of their cultural tendency to leave home at an early age, according to Miho Iwasawa, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>But young Japanese adults are more inclined to live with their parents, instead of alone, or with a lover, while single.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The number of single men aged 25 to 39 living with their parents rose from 2.33 million in 1990 to 3.23 million in 2000 and accounted for about half of single men in that age group. For women, the figure jumped from 1.42 million to 2.51 million, making up 58.2 percent of the total.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Living with parents offers certain advantages, including possibly fewer household chores and the ability to save more money.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Living at home also does not necessarily prevent sexual activity, as the love hotel industry caters specifically to these needs, offering cheap, clean accommodations, available by the hour or longer, said sociologist Masahiro Yamada of Tokyo Gakugei University.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Other countries also see a greater frequency of couples living together for a certain time before marriage.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>In Sweden, for example, more than 90 percent of married couples had earlier shared a common-law life.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>But a Mainichi Shimbun survey in 2004 showed that only about 15 percent of 2,421 Japanese women aged 20 to 49 said they had lived with a boyfriend when they were single.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Japan meanwhile has a low percentage of children born out of wedlock. And abortions in Japan are common, with 319,831 taking place in fiscal 2003, according to health ministry figures.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Of all newborns in 2003, only 1.93 percent were born out of wedlock, compared with 10.8 percent in Italy in 2002 and 56 percent in Sweden in 2003.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Chizuko Ueno, a sociologist at the University of Tokyo, attributed the low percentage of illegitimate children in Japan in part to the social and legal discrimination against them.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Children here born out of wedlock face some unique biases: They are entitled to only half of the inheritance that legitimate children receive, and their status can be deduced from official family registration documents.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>As the government gropes for ways to end the birthrate plunge, it also faces the challenge of putting the nation's fiscal house in order. In the process, single moms are not exempt.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>To hold down ballooning social welfare costs, legal revisions that took effect in April 2003 have reduced total child-care support for single mother households, except in certain cases, and instead placed greater priority on giving single moms more job opportunities and strengthening legal obligations for fathers to pay child support.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Ueno said the government could boost the nation's birthrate by creating an environment where people who do not want to marry but still want children can do so.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>' –

needs to do away with the stigma that society puts on illegitimate children. In addition, the government should improve public support for single mothers," she said.

"It's good to have a society with less pressure on people to live standardized lifestyles."

Masanobu Masuda, a Cabinet Office director handling policies for dealing with the graying society and birthrate fall, acknowledged that legal discrimination against kids born out of wedlock exists.

But Masuda noted that this reflects a sense of Japanese morality that men and women should only have children after getting married.

"(Laws such as) the Civil Code can be revised (to eradicate discrimination) only when public views change" to accept more diverse lifestyles, he said.