Work-Family Trajectories over the Life Course of Japanese Males and Females: A Transition-Oriented Comparison Using Hidden Markov Models

It is well known that Japan is one of the countries where expanding female employment faces significant challenges. Although the proportion of female students enrolled in tertiary education is approaching half the student body, a smaller proportion of women transition into the workforce. In this study, we analyze the work-family life courses of Japanese society through a gender lens using data from Social Stratification and Social Mobility Survey conducted in 2015. We examine career trajectories, partnership, and parenthood across different age cohorts. Using a hidden Markov model with educational level and age cohort as covariates on the initial probabilities of the latent sub-model, we can account for missing responses, non-responses, and sample weights. This approach allows us to identify distinct life stages for men and women, as well as to track varied trajectories over time. We also highlight the “motherhood penalty”, whereby mothers’ careers tend to lag behind those of fathers, contributing to the gender wage gap. Furthermore, using a Markov chain model with decoded states, we detect a significant effect of education on the development of women’s careers.