In the Center for Sociology and the Study of the Life Course we are conducting a comprehensive research program on the social structure and the institutional contexts of life courses in contemporary societies. Our studies focus on the interdependencies between education, training, labor markets and families and their outcomes in regard to individual life trajectories and life chances.

Our empirical research strategies are based on retrospective, longitudinal surveys for a series of West and East German cohorts born between 1919 and 1971 supplemented by data from the German Socio-Economic Hosehold 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.