Longitudinal and Life Course Studies

A large literature shows that families with more resources are able to provide better learning environments and make more ambitious educational choices for their children. At the end of compulsory education, the result is a social-origin gap in school-track attendance and learning outcomes. Our pape…

Gender-typical educational and occupational goals are an important precursor of educational gender segregation and unequal opportunities of men and women in the labour market. However, little is known about how gender-typical aspirations develop during childhood and adolescence. Drawing on identity …

The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) is a large, nationally representative study that follows youth cohorts for ten years at a time as they transition from school into further study, work and other destinations. With more than 20 years of unit record data, LSAY provides researchers wi…

There is controversy regarding trends over time in the association between social origins and educational outcomes in the UK. An explanation may lie in different methods of analysis. This article provides new evidence about trends in inequality between the 1980s and 2010s and informs the debate abou…

TREE (Transitions from Education to Employment) is a Swiss nationwide longitudinal study that follows two cohorts of compulsory school leavers throughout their transitions from education to employment and middle adulthood. To date, the first cohort survey (initial N=6,343) based on the Swiss PISA 20…

This paper examines the role of different types of post-compulsory education in determining civic engagement (political interest and election participation) in England and Germany. The educational systems of England and Germany provide ideal comparators for investigating the social benefits of educa…

Transitions from education to work are subject to person-related factors and institutional opportunity structures. Life course research increasingly focuses on longitudinal effects of social background on educational and occupational pathways within early and strong school tracking. In this context,…