Social Stratification

The Social Stratification Department specialises in modern stratification research, going beyond simply describing social stratification or social inequalities to examine the causes and effects of subjective well-being, quality of life, and health, and focusing especially on stratification processes in the family, the education system, and the labour market. It applies and develops modern empirical methods of data analysis in its research and methodologies enabling the study of causal processes. Alongside the now classic research methods of longitudinal studies and structural modelling, the department also employs experimental and quasi-experimental methods and conducts methodological experiments. An important feature of this new department is its multi-disciplinary foundation, which is grounded in collaborative ties to institutions in the natural and medical sciences. The objective is to describe and explain the effects of social inequalities by integrating and applying findings from different fields.