Abstract
Abstract Age and social status have been seen as distinct building blocks of social structure and thus as separate principles of the social organization of societies. Age-segregated societies tend to be premodern and smaller, while class-based stratification systems stand for modern industrial societies. Traditionally social status was taken to be fairly permanent as a life-long social position, and life-course dynamics were at best marginal to the study of stratification. In contrast, there are good reasons to see the “life course” as central to understanding inequalities: life courses express mechanisms of allocation and selection; social advantages and disadvantages accumulate across life courses; social classes distinguish themselves by typical life-course patterns; the pluralization of life courses could erode or reinforce social stratification; and generational divides recently appear to widen rather than narrow. This chapter discusses analytical aspects of the relationship between stratification and the life course and highlights substantive questions in stratification research that require a life-course approach illustrated by examples of recent comparative research.
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