A latent class analysis towards stability and changes in breadwinning patterns among coupled households

We examine how couples'breadwinning patterns are classified and how they have changed over the past four decades during which we have seen increase in women's labor force participation. We explore how the latent variable of spousal breadwinning types is associated with the socioeconomic statuses. To this end, we consider a latent class model especially tailored for an underlying ordinal response derived by comparing two continuous variables. We develop method to estimate the model parameters accounting for the informative sampling design and missing responses. We estimate the measurement model parameters by means of a weighted likelihood function maximised through the Expectation-Maximization algorithm. In order to determine the suitable number of latent classes we rely on the Akaike Information Criterion. Then, fixing the obtained parameters we estimate the latent model parameters by adding the full set of covariates. We make predictions on the basis of the maximum a-posteriori probability. Using data from the Japanese surveys covering the period from 1985 to 2015 breadwinning patterns are examined. Our model discloses two latent classes, each of which represents distinct breadwinning types, namely ``traditional couples" and ``new couples". Interestingly, the two-class pattern persists across the four waves covering the past 40 years.