ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the methodological limitations of traditional inequality studies. It shows that longitudinal data and methods as well as the principles of life course research, as stated by Elder, are of utmost significance in social inequality research: (1) focusing on long-term, cumulative inequality processes over the lifespan; (2) considering individual pathways within their institutional and social embeddedness; (3) analysing decision-making processes at important life course transitions connected with the idea of agency as well as of planning, creative, and self-determining actors; (4) investigating the time structure and timing of inequality events and transitions and their consequences for the subsequent inequality pathways and opportunities; (5) conceptionally differentiating age, cohort, and period effects. This contribution discusses the importance of these five principles for the conception, the design, and the analysis of inequality studies. In the context of these principles, we formulate methodological advantages of longitudinal data and methods for studying inequality over the life course.
