Table 4.
Distribution of Respondents Across Trajectory Groups, by Estimation Strategy and Gender
| Men |
Women |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type of trajectory | Latent Class Analysis |
Latent Class Growth Models |
Growth Mixture Models |
Latent Class Analysis |
Latent Class Growth Models |
Growth Mixture Models |
| Employment status | ||||||
| Consistently employed | 51.9% | 51.7% | 49.2% | 43.5% | 42.4% | 30.2% |
| Retired in early 60s | 28.2% | 27.6% | 24.6% | 25.2% | 25.3% | 23.7% |
| Retired in mid 50s | 14.4% | 14.2% | 17.0% | – | – | – |
| Intermittent/no employment | 5.5% | 6.4% | 9.1% | 15.1% | 14.7% | 29.2% |
| Late entry | – | – | – | 16.2% | 17.6% | 16.8% |
| Job quality | ||||||
| Never held a bad job | 60.5% | 60.3% | 52.7% | 55.3% | 55.1% | 54.3% |
| Always held a bad job | 17.4% | 17.6% | 20.5% | 16.0% | 16.7% | 19.7% |
| Transitioned into a bad job | 13.2% | 13.7% | 13.8% | 14.3% | 13.6% | 13.2% |
| Transitioned out of a bad job | 9.0% | 8.4% | 13.0% | 14.4% | 14.6% | 12.7% |
| Health insurance benefits | ||||||
| Received health insurance until 60s | 32.8% | 53.7% | 42.1% | 33.1% | 34.5% | 23.3% |
| Received health insurance until 50s | 28.6% | 25.8% | 27.6% | 19.2% | 18.3% | 25.0% |
| Intermittent | 24.4% | 10.3% | 16.7% | – | – | – |
| Never received insurance | 14.1% | 10.2% | 13.6% | 30.5% | 29.8% | 34.3% |
| Transitioned into a job w/ coverage | – | – | – | 17.1% | 17.4% | 17.4% |
| Pension benefits | ||||||
| Received pension benefits until 60s | 42.8% | 43.8% | 50.4% | 27.5% | 28.6% | 23.8% |
| Received pension benefits until 50s | 26.9% | 26.0% | 23.9% | 19.0% | 18.3% | 24.7% |
| Never received benefits | 17.1% | 16.9% | 14.7% | 35.1% | 34.3% | 35.2% |
| Intermittent | 13.2% | 13.3% | 11.0% | – | – | – |
| Transitioned into a job w/ benefits | – | – | – | 18.4% | 18.8% | 16.2% |
| Marital status | ||||||
| Marriage in early to mid-20s | 54.2% | 48.9% | 47.0% | 59.4% | 62.7% | 63.5% |
| Marriage after age 30 | 27.4% | 25.2% | 25.7% | 17.8% | 22.5% | 11.1% |
| Multiple marriages | 12.7% | 16.6% | 17.4% | 14.6% | – | 12.3% |
| Divorce with no remarriage | 5.7% | 9.2% | 10.0% | 8.2% | 14.8% | 13.1% |
Note: WLS sample restricted to graduates who responded to the 1975, 1993, and 2004 telephone surveys. The qualitative labels provided in the leftmost column describe the basic shape of the trajectory. Job quality was measured using quartiles of the occupational earnings distribution; jobs in the bottom quartile were considered to be “bad” (see, e.g., Raymo et al. 2011). See text for a description of the methods we used to infer the most appropriate number of latent trajectories and trajectory group membership.