The mission of the Center is to support empirical research on inequalities of social class, generation and gender and how they are brought about through processes across the life course. We are conducting a comprehensive research program on the social structure and the institutional contexts of life courses in contemporary societies. Substantively, our work focuses on human development and family formation, educational trajectories, vocational training, labor market entry, occupational careers and income trajectories, retirement and aging as well as corresponding social policies.
Methodologically, the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course concentrates on models and techniques for the analysis of longitudinal data. Theoretically, a main interest is to explain individual level life course processes through macro level contexts of societal institutions and socio-economic conditions changing across time and varying across societies. The Center is the home of the data archive of the German Life History Study (GLHS). The GLHS is based on retrospective, longitudinal surveys for a series of West and East German cohorts born between 1890 and 1971, comprising more than 12,500 individual life histories. These surveys are supplemented by data from the German Socio-Economic Household Panel, the Employment Register and corresponding data sources for other countries.
Current projects are concerned, among else, with the pathways to employment and occupation for West German women and men born 1964 and 1971, with life courses in East Germany under the impact of sudden system change, and with the mechanisms matching education and training to occupation and social status. The Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course sponsors a weekly colloquium, training seminars and workshops.
