Adopting a child, as an alternative to bearing a child, is a widely accepted means of creating a family in America today. By contrast, it is surprisingly uncommon for married couples in Japan to adopt an infant and raise the child “as their own.” In my estimates, the rate of unrelated child adoption per 10,000 births in recent years was about 170 in the U.S. and 6 in Japan. In this study, I use a framework of family economics to examine the evolution of child adoption in the U.S. and Japan from 1950 to 2010. I compile historical statistics to compare the trends in child adoption and explore demand-side, supply-side, and institutional factors underlying the observed trends. I find that, in the U.S., there has been an “excess demand” for adoptable infants throughout the postwar period and thus the trends were essentially driven by the availability of infants relinquished for adoption. Due to large supply shocks, the composition of child adoption in the U.S. has changed greatly from domestic infant adoption to the adoption of foreign infants and foster-care children since the 1970s. It is much harder to explain the adoption trends in Japan, however, which exhibit a persistent and continuous decline over the last five decades. Taking advantage of the major legal reform that took place in 1988, I test a demand-side theory of child adoption and examine what motivated parents to adopt children in Japan. Finally, I discuss a role of child adoption in improving children’s welfare.

Chiaki Moriguchi is a professor at the Institute of Economic Research of Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo. She received a BA from Kyoto University, an MA from Osaka University, and a PhD from Stanford University, all in economics. She was an assistant professor at Harvard Business School and Northwestern University and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, prior to joining Hitotsubashi University in 2009. Her main research fields are comparative economic history, comparative institutional analysis, and the economics of family. She has worked on the comparative historical analysis of employment systems, income inequality, and family formation in Japan and the U.S. Her research has appeared in Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic History, and Industrial and Labor Relations Review. She is a recipient of the 2011 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Prize.  

Speaker Bio:

Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), resident in FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, effective July 2010. He comes to Stanford from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy and director of SAIS' International Development program.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues relating to questions concerning democratization and international political economy. His book, The End of History and the Last Man, was published by Free Press in 1992 and has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent books are The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, and Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States.

Francis Fukuyama was born on October 27, 1952. He received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation from 1979-1980, then again from 1983-89, and from 1995-96. In 1981-82 and in 1989 he was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, the first time as a regular member specializing in Middle East affairs, and then as Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. In 1981-82 he was also a member of the US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. He served as a member of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.

Dr. Fukuyama is chairman of the editorial board of a new magazine, The American Interest, which he helped to found in 2005. He holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), and Kansai University (Japan). He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, member of the Board of Governors of the Pardee Rand Graduate School, and member of the advisory boards for the Journal of Democracy, the Inter-American Dialogue, and The New America Foundation. He is a member of the American Political Science Association and the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

Emeritus History professor Barton J. Bernstein will present a lecture on the U.S. decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan in August 1945. The hour-long lecture will be followed by a Q&A session. 

Professor Bernstein's lecture is planned as a response-- partly in agreement and partly in disagreement-- to the noted filmmaker Oliver Stone's documentary, "The Bomb."