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The story
In the 2025 “Basic Survey on Birth Trends,” released on the 11th by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, 24.0% of unmarried men and 21.5% of unmarried women aged 18–34 said they “never plan to marry.” Both figures topped 20% for the first time since the survey began, marking new record highs. The results are being reported as evidence of an accelerating shift away from marriage, seen as one factor behind Japan’s falling birthrate.
On 5ch, opinions split over whether these numbers should be taken at face value as a preview of the future non-marriage rate. Some voiced skepticism about the survey’s reliability (“Everyone says that when they’re young — who knows how they’ll feel in 10 years”), while others shared firsthand accounts of marriage and divorce, the burden of dual-income households, and the gender imbalance in the matchmaking market as concrete factors behind the shift away from marriage.
Fri, Sep 11, 14:00 JST
Mainichi Shimbun
When asked whether they intended to ever marry, unmarried men and women (aged 18–34) who said they “never plan to marry” came to 24.0% of men and 21.5% of women. Both exceeded 20% for the first time and marked record highs. This was revealed in the 2025 “Basic Survey on Birth Trends,” published on the 11th by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS). The findings highlighted an accelerating shift away from marriage, cited as one factor behind the falling birthrate.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The real question is whether you still feel that way in 10 years.
This survey's pointless.
For women, a lot of them want to marry as students, but once they enter the workforce it becomes ‘dual income and raising kids? No way lol,’ so the number actually goes down.
Source: my own daughter.
Since I was a stay-at-home mom, she apparently planned to be one too — but she gave up because she couldn't even meet a high-earning guy in the first place.
Never wanted to marry, but I did anyway and got divorced in my 40s.
The time I spent married was wasted — I really do think I shouldn't have married.
If I could go back, I wouldn't do it again.
With fewer births, there aren't enough workers or people to sustain the social security system, so we're heading toward a world where you work until you die.
If you don't want to work until you die, then:
working-age people need to have three or more kids,
today's elderly need to keep working until their healthy life expectancy runs out,
and society needs to stop letting NEETs get away with coasting.
Not sure what the point was, lol.
Ugly guys like me aren't even qualified to fall for a woman, let alone talk to one or say hello, so I get zero good encounters with women — not even bad ones.
Since I'm banned from communicating with women, it's flat-out impossible for me to ever meet one.
Depends on the person's lifestyle, doesn't it.
Once I hit retirement, I'll barely leave the house except to buy food and live a rosy life buried in online games — I doubt I'll feel pathetic at all.
That ‘pathetic’ talk only applies to guys who wanted to marry but couldn't.
You're way too swept up by instinct, huh?
Is there actually any upside?
If you have kids, do you get to be reincarnated as them when you die?
Or if you have a daughter, can she take care of your sex drive for you?
Or do kids sell for a lot of money?
Seriously, why have kids at all?
You'd definitely live better off without them.
Bluntly put, they're your future caregivers.
I've never once thought of kids as parasites. They're pure treasure. Did your own parents treat you like a parasite?
Their conclusion: ‘It only works if you pile endurance on endurance, patience on patience, give up your freedom, and throw away your money, time, mental health, and pretty much every other kind of richness.’
They also said your happiness index tanks if you're supporting an unemployed partner, like a stay-at-home spouse.
It's true that after 10 years, most couples have lost the love between them.
Maybe a life spent gritting your teeth and seething with irritation while living together forever really is the unhappiest life there is.
Yeah, that really is unreasonable when you put it that way.
If life were only about 50 years, marriage would be fine, but spending 80 years with one person is basically a punishment game.
If you seriously think everyone wants to get married, you're way behind the times.
Of those, 82% said ‘it's painful being together, but money keeps us from divorcing.’
Apparently it's because they couldn't get by on reduced income after divorce, or because of the mortgage.
I think the next biggest reason was kids.
In the end, most people are just staying in a painful marriage for the money.
That's exactly us.
Can't move because of the mortgage.
I want to start my life over.
Had someone look into it — no such survey exists.
Rather than spending their time and money on marriage and raising kids, they'd rather spend it on their own pleasure.
Go ahead, keep raising that singles tax — become nutrients for society.
You're the one who's going to be the nutrients for society (well, technically your kids will be).
I wonder how many grandpas and grandmas each one of your kids will end up supporting.
Impressive that you had them knowing that.
As an antinatalist myself, I can't even imagine it.
That said, seriously, thank you.
Feel free to keep having more, lol.
Marriage is nothing but getting exploited.
Office jobs have a job-openings-to-applicants ratio of 0.2. You're in more demand as a marriage partner.
It's all men.
Well, obviously, lol.
What are you even saying — this is an app where 90% of the guys are supposedly just looking for hookups, lol.
Someone graph the post-marriage divorce rate by generation, broken down by how many years after the wedding it happens.
By the way, the divorce rate is overwhelmingly highest for people who married in their teens.
Don't need to take care of some partner I can't stand~
Way too risky a gamble.
Not a single person ever gets rewarded from oshi-katsu (obsessively supporting your favorite idol/celebrity) — that's not even a gamble.
That's exactly why you study hard, get into a good university and company, and then pick who you date.
Background and Key Points of Debate
The latest figures come from the 2025 edition of the “Basic Survey on Birth Trends,” which the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research conducts every five years, covering unmarried men and women aged 18–34. The share answering “I never plan to marry” topped 20% for both sexes for the first time, setting new record highs. This survey has long been watched as an indicator of the shift away from marriage, seen as one factor behind the falling birthrate, and this jump shows the existing trend accelerating.
What split opinion in the thread was how to interpret these numbers. Some pointed out that the survey itself can’t predict the future (“everyone feels that way when they’re young — who knows in 10 years”), while others who had actually gone through divorce shared stories along the lines of “I wish I’d never married.” On the subject of divorce rates and surveys of married people’s attitudes, the thread saw both posts citing figures with no clear source and posts correcting them, highlighting the mixed reliability of information about “what marriage is really like” that circulates online.
One point readers can easily misread: this question only measures a stated intention — “do you plan to ever marry” — which is a different metric from the actual share of people who end up never marrying in their lifetime (the lifetime unmarried rate).
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Survey] ‘I never plan to marry’ tops 20% for the first time — no benefits seen in marriage.”
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