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Social Inequality Across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

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Social Inequality Across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

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Social Inequality across the Life
Course: Societal Unfolding and
Individual Agency
JUTTA HECKHAUSEN

Abstract
Social inequality is rising around the globe with devastating consequences for
individuals and societies. Modern societies allow social mobility but vary greatly
in the extent and means by which it is hampered or facilitated at different points
in the life course. Motivational and lifespan developmental psychology view
individuals as agents of their development, and specify sequential models and
strategies for adaptive developmental agency. Individual differences in planful
goal selection, optimism, action-orientation, and goal disengagement capacities are
critical for adaptive developmental agency, especially under conditions of major
age-graded changes in opportunities, unexpected losses, or increasing uncertainty
and destabilization of life courses.

The discussion about social inequality in the public media has become
omnipresent. A topic, previously “suspected” as being the domain of Marxist and left-leaning ideology, has morphed into one of the greatest public
concerns in modern societies. It is now common knowledge that social
inequality has become rapidly more pronounced over the past few decades
(see Figure 1, OECD, 2011) and that it has many detrimental consequences
both for communities (e.g., higher crime rates) and their individual members
(e.g., shorter life expectancy). We also know that countries across the globe
vary quite a bit in the degree of social inequality, ranging from 23 for Sweden
to 63 for South Africa, with Germany at 27 and the United States at 45 (CIA,
2013). Among modern western industrialized countries, the United States
has by far the greatest social disparity between those who are at the top
compared to those at the bottom of the society. However, even in European
countries with their relatively less extreme ranges, the consequences of
social inequality can be severe and can be found within a few miles of each
other in a given city. For instance, in Glasgow (Scotland) a man living in
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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1985

2008( )
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Increasing inequality
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Figure 1 Changes in income inequality. Source: OECD Database on Household
Income Distribution and Poverty (OECD, 2011).

Milngavie, the most affluent neighborhood, will on average live 28 years
longer than a man living in Carlton, the poorest neighborhood of the city.
It is important to consider though that this modern-society inequality is different from the inequality of medieval society. In feudalistic societies, social
inequality was an immutable and unchallenged fact of life. People did not
think of the unequal distribution of resources as unjust (Elias, 1969). Moreover, nobody developed the notion of striving to move up in society to reach
a higher social status.
By contrast, modern societies allow and encourage—at least in their
ideology—the individual to move up the social ladder. An individual’s life
course is not predetermined by the position of his or her parents, and thus
the individual has greater opportunities, and with the opportunities the
individual is ascribed a greater responsibility for where she/he ends up on
the social ladder.
INDIVIDUALS AS AGENTS OF THEIR OWN SOCIAL MOBILITY
In modern societies, individuals do not formally inherit their parents’
position in society. Of course, the social status of parents still plays a
large role in shaping the social destiny of their sons and daughters, but
it is mainly through mechanism that influences their offsprings’ access
to and performance in educational institutions and their opportunities to
enter professional careers (e.g., via internships and entry-level jobs). Most
individuals—maybe with the exception of the super-wealthy who inherit
a fortune that will support them throughout their life—have to embark on

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

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a path of making it in the adult world, an adult world, which is structured
into a multirung system of social status.
Maintaining her parents’ social position for (say) the daughter of a
physician is not a given, but requires reacquiring that status by choosing
appropriate short- and long-term goals for education and career and the
active engagement of parents and in particular the daughter herself. For
someone who comes from a family of low social status (e.g., no-college
degree working class) moving up in society to attain a professional career
position is even harder, because they have fewer family-based resources
and no models within their family to facilitate moving into and completing
higher education and enter a promising professional career. Moving up
probably requires greater personal capacities in terms of intellectual competencies and/or motivational commitment and planfulness on the part of the
individual than merely maintaining, or rather reacquiring, one’s parents’
social status.
MOTIVATIONAL THEORY OF LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT
My colleagues and I developed the Motivational Theory of Lifespan
Development (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010), which conceptualizes
individual agency in lifespan development in terms of three basic characteristics: (i) the striving for control in the environment (i.e., primary control)
and of one’s own motivation and emotion (i.e., secondary control), (ii) the
selection of goals for control striving that reflects the control opportunities
available in the present developmental ecology, and (iii) the organization
of behavior into cycles of goal engagement and disengagement (Figure 2)
(Heckhausen, 2011; Heckhausen & Heckhausen, 2010; Heckhausen et al.,
2010). People can be either in a GO mode of engagement with a developmental goal (e.g., bear a child) or a STOP mode of disengaging from
the goal. During the GO mode of goal engagement, all behavioral and
motivational resources should be mobilized to pursue the goal. Then, as
opportunities for successful goal engagement fade away (e.g., time runs out
with biological clock) or costs for competing domains become prohibitive,
the individual should decisively switch to disengagement, without wasting
further resources with half-hearted attempts. For beloved long-term goals
to be given up, the individual might need to use self-protective strategies to
keep the emotional responses at bay. Such an efficient disengagement from
a personal developmental goal can free up resources for engagement with
new or adjusted goals that are still or newly attainable.
Taking control of one’s own development and life course, especially in
regard to social status, requires that the individual figures out the appropriate long- and short-term goals and steps leading to them. Appropriate goals

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Rubicon:
Goal decision

Deadline:
Loss of opportunities

Goal engagement
Not urgent
Optimize
opportunity match,
consequences, and
diversity

Selective
primary control
Selective
secondary control

Urgent
Increased selective
primary and
secondary control
Compensatory
primary control

After failure:
Compensatory
secondary control

After success:
capitalize on
success;
new action cycle

Figure 2 Action-phase model of developmental regulation. Source: Adapted
from Heckhausen (1999).

are those that are feasible in terms of available opportunities in one’s social
ecology and in terms of one’s own resources (e.g., abilities, skills) and which
also do not undermine control in other areas or in the long run, keeping
interdomain and long-term costs low.
Engaging with long-term developmental goals is not a trivial matter.
Individuals have to integrate such engagement with other activities of
everyday life. It is not like deciding on a quick task and then just doing
it because a developmental goal is long-term and the individual needs to
keep coming back to it after spending time and resources on other needed
activities and indeed on other goals (e.g., social relationships). This requires
a lot of volitional control in terms of staying committed to the goal and
making oneself come back to it and initiate the next step. Individuals with
particular strengths in volitional control and motivational self-regulation in
general should have an advantage.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Successful developmental regulation, according to the motivational theory
of lifespan development (see review in Heckhausen et al., 2010), is to
a large extent a function of individuals engaging with goals when the
opportunities are favorable and disengaging from goals when opportunities
are becoming scarce or goal pursuit has become too costly (e.g., exclusive
focus on athletic competition at expense of general education). Extensive
empirical research on the congruence between goals of control striving and
opportunities for goal attainment has shown that most individuals generally
engage with feasible goals and disengage from futile ones (see review in
Heckhausen et al., 2010). However, the degree to which individuals manage
to match goal opportunities varies with the individual differences in the
use of control strategies even when confronted with similar opportunities

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

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for goal attainment. Moreover, more adaptive use of control strategies is
associated with better developmental outcomes, including psychological
well-being and even physical health (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Fleeson, 2001;
Heckhausen et al., 2010; Wrosch & Heckhausen, 1999; Wrosch, Schulz, Miller,
Lupien, & Dunne, 2007). There are a few fairly general individual differences
in motivational and volitional self-regulation, which may play a critical part
in how effective someone is in selecting and pursuing his/her life goals (see
also discussion in Heckhausen & Wrosch, 2016). The four discussed here are
by no means a complete set of relevant dispositions for control striving, but
they are likely among the most important.
Planfulness/Reflectiveness in Goal Selection Congruence with available opportunities is critical, so individuals who take into account the social and developmental ecology before choosing a particular goal to pursue, should achieve
better outcomes. Moreover, given the interdependence of life domains, one
needs to consider the concurrent and long-term consequences of engaging
with a goal for other domains of life (e.g., consequences of long-term investing in a career goal for family-related goals). We have used the Optimization
in Primary and Secondary (OPS) Control Scales to assess optimized goal
choice as well as specific primary and secondary control strategies (Heckhausen et al., 2010).
Dispositional Optimism Individuals differ in the extent to which they expect
positive versus negative outcomes to occur in their everyday lives (Scheier
& Carver, 1985) and that has consequences for improved persistence,
more vigorous problem-focused coping, subjective well-being, and physical health (Rasmussen, Wrosch, Scheier, & Carver, 2006). Even though
dispositional optimism has not been studied so far in association with
development-focused control striving, it is likely to enhance the tendency
for engaging with and persisting for ambitious goals. Dispositional optimism should be particularly helpful during volitional phases of action and
when the individual encounters obstacles and setbacks. On the other hand,
dispositional optimism could be problematic in contexts of delicate goal
selection, particularly when it is essential to avoid excessive aspirations and
when the goal selection has to be closely calibrated to the opportunities and
risks in a developmental ecology (Heckhausen & Tomasik, 2002).
Action versus State Regulation.
Individuals differ in the degree and decisiveness with which they are
engaged with a goal or disengaged from a goal. Julius Kuhl and his colleagues have studied the action versus state orientation of individuals as

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predictors of the following types of behavior: effective focus of behavior,
thoughts, and affect on goal pursuits is characteristic of action-oriented
individuals, whereas state-oriented individuals tend to get stuck in currently
experienced emotions, cognitions, and behaviors as well as past failures
(Kuhl, 1981). These action-regulatory traits are conceptually closely related
to dispositional foundations of primary and secondary control strategies
involved in goal engagement and disengagement, control strategies we
assess using the OPS Scales. Action-oriented individuals can be expected
to better orchestrate primary and secondary control strategies for goal
engagement and disengagement, whereas state-oriented individuals might
get stuck in a previous action phase or overly focus on secondary control
strategies while loosing sight of their function for primary control.
Goal Disengagement Capacities.
This individual difference dimension refers to individuals’ general readiness
to withdraw commitment and effort from the pursuit of unattainable goals
(see review in Wrosch, Scheier, & Miller, 2013). Goal disengagement capacities can affect developmental goal striving in various adaptive ways. First,
disengaging from futile goals is adaptive as such, because it helps avoid frustration. Importantly, disengaging from unattainable goals frees up resources
for engaging with attainable goals and thus helps to attain them. Initial studies on the development of the capacity to disengage from goals indicate that a
sensitive developmental period may be during adolescence, when the experience of depressive symptoms promotes the development of disengagement
capacities, thus rendering the older adolescent more resilient to depression
(Wrosch & Miller, 2009).
WHEN IS REGULATING ONE’S OWN DEVELOPMENT THE MOST CHALLENGING?
Much of everyday behavior, even when directed at long-term goals, such as
attaining an education, building a family, or moving up in one’s career, are
scaffolded by institutions (e.g., school, employer) or one’s social context (e.g.,
expectations and agreements with peers or partner) and thus well buffered
against distractions or motivational conflict. Under normal conditions and
between life-course transitions when opportunities change, individuals do
not have to invest a lot of motivational considerations in deciding which
goals to pursue, and they also do not typically need to invest much volitional effort to stay committed to the goal they are currently pursuing (e.g.,
attain a BA). However, there are certain challenging conditions that call for
the individual agent to step up to make important decisions for a new goal
or whether to disengage from an old goal, enhance volitional commitment or

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

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use new more intense strategies of goal pursuit. I briefly discuss three such
challenging conditions, a list not meant to be exhaustive.
Major Age-Graded Changes in Opportunities for Goal Pursuit The human life
course is structured by a number of major life transitions, which occur at
certain ages. During these major life transitions, opportunities for old goals
disappear and opportunities for new goals open up. Given that human
behavior is not much regulated by instincts, these discrete changes in
opportunities require an adaptation of the individual in terms of his/her
goal orientations. A facilitating factor may be that to the extent that these
changes are age-related common changes, individuals expect them and can
prepare for them. Expected age-graded changes in opportunities call for
old, now obsolete, goals to be deactivated and new, now feasible, goals to be
selected in accordance with opportunities and potential consequences. This
means the individual as an active agent in her/his development is called for
and challenged.
One of the most consequential of these transitions is the transition from
adolescence to adulthood, which is endowed by a plethora of new opportunities and challenges to complete secondary education, pursue higher education or vocational training, enter a career, become financially independent
from one’s parents, and find a long-term romantic partner (Buchmann &
Kriesi, 2011). During the transition to adulthood, major decision points are
passed and thus the course is set on an individual’s prospects for upward or
downward social mobility. Motivational and regulatory capacities needed to
master these challenges involve analytic abilities and planfulness to assess
opportunities and long-term consequences of educational and career decisions, as well as robust (i.e., resilient and persistent) goal engagement with
chosen goals (see review in Heckhausen & Shane, 2015).
Some major life transitions involve substantial declines in opportunities for goal engagement. If opportunities sink below a certain level, the
individual needs to reorient motivationally by disengaging from obsolete
goals and engaging with new still obtainable goals. One example is the
“biological clock,” that is the diminishing fertility in the fourth decade
of women’s life (Heckhausen et al., 2001). The motivational reorientation
required at such transition points of diminished opportunities is captured
in the developmental deadline model (Figure 2) and reflects high challenges
for motivational self-regulation. Our empirical studies of control striving
around developmental deadlines of child-bearing and of partnerships
indicate that those individuals who better master an opportunity-congruent
switching from urgent goal engagement to goal disengagement are more

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

likely to attain better subjective well-being and mental health (Heckhausen
et al., 2001, 2010; Wrosch & Heckhausen, 1999).
Uncertain or Obfuscated Opportunities for Goal Pursuit It is not always clear,
whether pursuing a certain goal will lead to success or not. Sometimes,
opportunities for goal progress are obfuscated by uncertainty about the
boundary conditions or about the future perspective of these opportunities.
This is particularly true for the attainability and the long-term sustainability
of career goals, and even more pronounced under conditions of economic
globalization and the uncertainties that come with it. Globalization has
caused decreasing transparency of opportunities and predictability of
long-term consequences of educational or career decisions (Buchholz et al.,
2009). The most detrimental consequences of uncertainty associated with
globalization are suffered first and foremost by youth just entering the labor
market (Blossfeld, Klijzing et al., 2005), but also by women returning to and
older adults leaving the labor market. Uncertainty is also the result of radical
and sudden societal change, such as in the case of German reunification.
Here, the group most affected were middle-aged adults, who at their
advanced midlife age could neither reinvest in a new career path nor get
ready to retire and thus languished without engagement or disengagement
(Diewald, Huinink, & Heckhausen, 1996).
Lower socioeconomic status may add to the obfuscation of opportunities,
especially as they relate to advanced education. Youth who are the first in
their family to attend college, for example, often do not know about opportunities for graduate education and which career prospects are associated
with it. Thus, even under conditions of equal opportunities, different social
groups may have different access to critical information to make upward
social mobility work for them.
Major Unexpected Losses of Control Some of the most taxing challenges for
developmental regulation are situations of sudden and unexpected loss of
control. Examples are natural disasters, but also health events and processes
of severe and progressive illness and disability. Under such difficult circumstances, it is most essential to preserve still available areas of control and give
up those, which are rapidly getting out of reach. On the basis of the Motivational Theory of Control, we developed a Lines-of-Defense (LoD) model
for managing this latter type of challenge (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz,
2013). The LoD model specifies a set of lines of defense, ranging in severity of constraints from reestablishing uncompromised health, over getting
other people to help, using technical aids (e.g., hearing aid, wheel chair) to
accepting disability, and giving up certain activities of daily living.

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

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Another type of circumstance of severe loss of control are processes of rapid
and radical social change (Silbereisen & Chen, 2010). Radical social change
typically involves a relative dissolution of institutional controls, and thus has
the potential for creating opportunities for individual agents to take charge
of their own life. However, deregulation by itself, if not accompanied by economic opportunity, is not conducive to individuals taking initiative to shape
their own future (Silbereisen & Chen, 2010). Under circumstances of severe
dearth of opportunity in parts of the world with economies crippled by political or religious unrest or forbidding climates, the most agentic thing to do is to
pick up and leave. It can be expected that individuals with the strongest disposition for primary control striving coupled with the planfulness of having
the long view of the benefits of leaving a low-control region are the ones who
self-select for self-uprooting and migration. Unfortunately, the very disposition, which makes them migrate, will make it especially aversive for them
to fit in at the lower rungs of the social ladder of the societies they are joining as powerless and resource-poor newcomers. Those who decide to stay in
low-control countries fare best if they disengage from those goals that have
become futile, even if they are as essential goals as getting a job (Tomasik,
Silbereisen, & Heckhausen, 2010).
DIFFERENT SOCIETIES ENTAIL DIFFERENT OPPORTUNITY
STRUCTURES FOR SOCIAL MOBILITY
Western societies vary in the degree to which they emphasize the individual’s
responsibility for moving up in society, with the United States promoting
the most extreme notion of the self-made (wo)man in the ideology of the
“American Dream.” In some way, it seems like a paradox that the nation with
the greatest inequality should sport such lofty ideals of individual agency in
social mobility, but in another way it is not so surprising because it may well
serve as an ideological compensation for the greater social inequality and
underdeveloped social security and welfare system.
Indeed, social inequality and social mobility are strongly negatively related,
as shown in Figure 3 (the Great Gatsby curve). The greater the inequality, the
lesser are the opportunities for social mobility. It is as if in societies with particularly pronounced social inequality the rungs of the ladder are just too far
apart to climb upward (or more than one rung upward), especially for those
at the bottom. For instance, in the United States, individuals coming from
the lowest quintile of income have about a 34% chance to stay in the bottom
quintile and a 22% chance to move up one quintile (Mazumder, 2014). Interestingly, there is “stickiness” at the top too. Being born into the top quintile of
income gives you a 38% chance to stay at the top and a 22% chance to move

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Generational earnings elasticity (less mobility ------>)

0.5

Italy

United Kingdom
United States

France

0.4

Japan
Germany

0.3

New Zealand

Sweden

Canada

Australia

0.2
Finland

Norway
Denmark

0.1
20

30
25
Income inequality (more inequality -------->)

35

Figure 3 The Great Gatsby Curve: more inequality is associated with less
mobility across the generations. Source: Adapted from Corak (2013), Figure 1.

down only one quintile. What about the possibility of jumping from the bottom to the top quintile? This “rags to riches” life-course trajectory is enjoyed
by only 7%. The inverse “riches to rags” scenario is suffered by only 11% of
the top income group (Mazumder, 2014).
When thinking about social mobility in different societies today, there are a
set of characteristics of the society’s social structure and its institutions, which
shape the action field of the individual in critical ways. These are discussed
in the following paragraphs.
ACCESSIBILITY AND EQUALITY OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Even among Western industrialized countries, access to high-quality primary, secondary, and tertiary education varies widely. Just the examples of
Germany and the United States make this clear. In Germany, the secondary
school system is institutionally segregated into different tiers leading to
college versus vocational training or simply paid work. This system is
unparalleled in transferring social status from generation to generation.
Working class children have to attain significantly better reading scores than
average to be recommended for transfer into the upper-tier school, whereas
upper middle-class and upper-class children can get such a recommendation
with significantly lower than average reading scores (Arnold, Bos, Richert,
& Stubbe, 2007).

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One would think that a unified system such as the common high school in
the United States would provide more equal chances to access a high-quality
educational institution than the three-tiered German school system. However, social inequality of educational access to US schools is conveyed
sociostructurally by differentially endowed schools because the school’s
equipment and teacher pay is a function of the tax income of the community,
and thus directly related to the wealth or poverty of the residents in their
neighborhoods. In the United States, the huge differences in quality and
educational offerings (e.g., number of Advanced Placement classes offered)
at the low end impair students’ chances to be accepted into the top-ranked
colleges.
PERMEABILITY OF EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER TRACKS
In the mid 1990s, Hamilton provided an analysis comparing the United States
and Germany in their links between school and employment, and pointed
out the trade-off between transparency of career outcomes and permeability of career tracks (Hamilton, 1994). He argued that the German vocational
training system provided, high permeability with low transparency but little
permeability of career tracks, whereas the inverse was true for the transition
from school to work in the United States. The essentials of this analyses are
likely still true even though professional and higher-level vocational career
requirements in the United States today include more educational qualifications, whereas in Germany more people end up never really using their college degree or vocational training to work in the specific career their degree
was aimed at (Heinz, 2002; Mayer, 2001).
Regarding the permeability of educational tracks too, Germany has more of a
closed system, especially now with practically all popular majors being subject to severe Numerus Clausus entry constraints, which make it impossible
to switch into these majors. In contrast, given the wide range of institutions in
the tertiary education system of the United States, anyone with a high school
degree can, at least in principle, gain access to some kind of college education
and earn a BA and do this in a major of her own choosing.
CALIBRATION VERSUS AMBITIOUSNESS OF EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER ASPIRATIONS
Given the comparatively low permeability of both educational and career
tracks, German youth have to calibrate even their long-term aspirations
carefully to their currently attained school performance because what they
can get access to in the short run will mostly determine what they can attain
in the long run. In a longitudinal study of middle-tier school graduates who
were applying for apprenticeship positions, we found that the 16-year-old
youths were calibrating their goals for vocational prestige of apprenticeships

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they planned to apply for closely to their own school performance (Heckhausen & Tomasik, 2002), fine-tuning their aspirations downward when they
were unsuccessful in obtaining offers for an apprenticeship, and upward
after success.
In the Unites States, with more options to move into tertiary education later
and via detours, youth with highly ambitious long-term aspirations have an
advantage. In fact, we found that those high-school graduates in our longitudinal study, who had extremely high ambitions for their long-term educational attainment were the most likely to attain a BA degree or be enrolled in
a 4-year college 4 years after our assessment in the senior year of high school
(Heckhausen & Chang, 2009). Entertaining high ambitions for one’s ultimate
educational achievement (e.g., get a graduate degree), apparently can carry
even a floundering youth from low school performance to ultimate college
success. Moreover, we found in our Los Angeles-based longitudinal study
of high-school graduates that even for short-term goals, picking more ambitious ones (e.g., get into a 4-year college next year) is better for educational
attainment in the long run than adjusting them to what can realistically be
expected for the coming year (Villarreal, Heckhausen, Lessard, Greemberger,
& Chen, 2015).
SCOPE OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION
The scope of social inequality varies a lot across countries (Figure 1) and
has important implications for potential social mobility (Figure 3). Those at
the bottom in societies with large social status differences in income and
resources can have little hope of ever making it far out of their disadvantaged situation. Moreover, certain groups are becoming entirely marginalized and cut off from opportunities, such as those not in employment, education, or training (NEET, Bynner & Parsons, 2002) in the United Kingdom
or the long-term unemployed receivers of Hartz-IV welfare benefits in Germany. Such circumstances should have substantial consequences for an individual’s expectations to overcome the odds and move up the social ladder.
IDEOLOGIES OF SOCIAL MOBILITY
Finally, societies differ in terms of whether and what kind of social mobility
is considered desirable and attainable. Historical and religious causes gave
rise to the most pronounced individualistic and optimistic idea of boundless
social ascent available to everyone who tries hard and persistent enough that
is associated with the rags-to-riches notion of the “American Dream.” The
meritocratic idea that everyone with capabilities and the willingness to try
can make it to the top conveys hope even when that seems unrealistic. The
“American Dream” provides the prospect of upward mobility to everyone

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

13

and thus helps keep in check revolutionary ideas of collective income
redistribution.
In contrast to the ideology of the “American Dream,” European social
and political history of class struggle has set up a fundamentally different
approach of the individual to social inequality. By and large, individuals in
Europe do not see themselves on a lonely individual struggle up the social
ladder but instead view themselves at a certain place in a socially stratified
society (Geissler & Meyer, 2006). Of course, everyone tries to improve his or
her lot in terms of standard of living and quality of work life but not in the
same sense of moving away from and climbing out of one’s social origin as
in the United States. In Europe, social inequality is seen as an undesirable
but inescapable societal reality. To compensate for unequal chances and
resources, the long-standing class struggle led by powerful unions and
political parties has won important battles and created impressive welfare
systems in the major European countries.
THE POWER OF AGENCY: IDEOLOGY, INDIVIDUAL STRIVING,
AND COLLECTIVE MISSION
The example of the United States of America shows that a society’s ideology about social mobility may be a far cry from what it currently actually
provides in terms of opportunities for upward mobility. It is fascinating to
examine how the individual agent navigates these disparities in ideology,
opportunity, own skills, capacities, and resources. In our own research, we
found that under conditions of an elaborate tertiary education system, which
facilitates transfer from community college to 4-year college as present in
California, individuals with extremely optimistic long-term aspirations fare
best in their long-term educational outcomes (Heckhausen & Chang, 2009).
Moreover, those high-school graduates with strong beliefs in the influence
of factors they have some control over, such as their own effort and using
social contacts, were more likely to be robustly engaged with their educational goals (Shane, Heckhausen, Lessard, Greenberger, & Chen, 2012). At
the next transition, the one from college to work, California students generally hold quite ambitious aspirations for climbing the social ladder and
besting their parent’s social status. Again, beliefs about the major causes of
social outcomes play a critical role. We identified two pathways (Shane &
Heckhausen, 2013): One group of students believe that success in society is
due to own ability and effort investment, and they report having more ambitious career goals and being more engaged with these career goals. The other
group of students believes that success is a function of uncontrollable luck,
and this group is more disengaged from their career goals. It will be important to follow these youth further and see whether at some point, those with

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

high control beliefs, ambitions, and engagement become discouraged if they
fail to achieve success, and end up changing their worldviews about success
in life along with giving up their high-flying goals..
Many research groups and longitudinal studies are addressing the transition to adulthood in different countries. It is important to join forces to compare societal conditions in terms of social structure, institutions, and beliefs
about social mobility, and longitudinally trace individuals’ courses of goal
setting, striving, adaptation of means, goal adjustment, and adjustment of
societal beliefs as they navigate the rapids of opportunity and hope, and
exclusion and disappointment. In this research effort, it will be especially
important to identify groups that are marginalized and de facto excluded
from participation in education and/or work (e.g., young men in Southern
European and North African countries), and thus have no chance to improve
their position in society.
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Mazumder, B. (2014). Upward intergenerational economic mobility in the United
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Shane, J., & Heckhausen, J. (2013). University students’ causal conceptions about
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health engagement control strategies. Health Psychology, 26, 341–349.

JUTTA HECKHAUSEN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jutta Heckhausen grew up in Germany and did her graduate work
and PhD at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland (advisor:
Dr. H. Rudolph Schaffer), where she studied the way in which infants’
development is promoted by interaction and joint activities with their mothers. In 1984, Jutta Heckhausen joined the Center for Life-Span Psychology

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

17

at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in Berlin (director: Dr.
Paul B. Baltes), where over the years she became a senior scientist with her
own research group. In the 1980s and 1990s, she expanded her research area
to include development in adulthood and old age, formulated the life-span
theory of control with her collaborator Dr. Richard Schulz (University
of Pittsburgh), and launched a research program to test its propositions
and applicability to developmental regulation in adulthood. In 2000, she
joined the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at UC Irvine.
In 1995/1996, Dr. Heckhausen was a fellow at the Center for Social and
Behavioral Science at Stanford. In 1999, she won the Max Planck Award for
International Collaboration and, in 2014, the Baltes Distinguished Research
Achievement Award. Her numerous books and journal articles are widely
cited (14,636 citations, h-index 44).
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Consequence (Sociology), Douglas L. Anderton and Kathleen F. Arcaro
The Impact of Bilingualism on Cognition (Psychology), Ellen Bialystok
Rent, Rent-Seeking, and Social Inequality (Sociology), Beth Red Bird and
David B. Grusky
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Jeanne Brooks-Gunn
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Brand
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Resilience (Psychology), Erica D. Diminich and George A. Bonanno
Cognitive Processes Involved in Stereotyping (Psychology), Susan T. Fiske
and Cydney H. Dupree
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Theodore E. A. Waters
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(Psychology), Peter M. Gollwitzer
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18

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

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The Future of Employment, Wages, and Technological Change (Economics),
Michael J. Handel
An Evolutionary Perspective on Developmental Plasticity (Psychology),
Sarah Hartman and Jay Belsky
Divorce (Sociology), Juho Härkönen
Lifecourse and Aging (Anthropology), Haim Hazan
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B. Drell
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Michaela Kreyenfeld
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et al.
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F. Robles and Josephine A. Menkin
Education in an Open Informational World (Education), Marlene Scardamalia
and Carl Bereiter
Gender and the Transition to Adulthood: A Diverse Pathways View (Sociology), Ingrid Schoon
Modeling Life Course Structure: The Triple Helix (Sociology), Tom Schuller
Becoming Adult: Meanings of Markers to Adulthood (Sociology), Richard A.
Settersten, Jr. et al.
Family Income Composition (Sociology), Kristin E. Smith
Emerging Trends: Shaping Age By Technology and Social Bonds (Sociology),
Annette Spellerberg and Lynn Schelisch
Impact of Limited Education on Employment Prospects in Advanced
Economies (Sociology), Heike Solga
Crime and the Life Course (Sociology), Mark Warr and Carmen Gutierrez
Public Opinion, the 1%, and Income Redistribution (Sociology), David L.
Weakliem
Recent Demographic Trends and the Family (Sociology), Lawrence L. Wu
Globalization: Consequences for Work and Employment in Advanced
Capitalist Societies (Sociology), Tony Elger



Social Inequality across the Life
Course: Societal Unfolding and
Individual Agency
JUTTA HECKHAUSEN

Abstract
Social inequality is rising around the globe with devastating consequences for
individuals and societies. Modern societies allow social mobility but vary greatly
in the extent and means by which it is hampered or facilitated at different points
in the life course. Motivational and lifespan developmental psychology view
individuals as agents of their development, and specify sequential models and
strategies for adaptive developmental agency. Individual differences in planful
goal selection, optimism, action-orientation, and goal disengagement capacities are
critical for adaptive developmental agency, especially under conditions of major
age-graded changes in opportunities, unexpected losses, or increasing uncertainty
and destabilization of life courses.

The discussion about social inequality in the public media has become
omnipresent. A topic, previously “suspected” as being the domain of Marxist and left-leaning ideology, has morphed into one of the greatest public
concerns in modern societies. It is now common knowledge that social
inequality has become rapidly more pronounced over the past few decades
(see Figure 1, OECD, 2011) and that it has many detrimental consequences
both for communities (e.g., higher crime rates) and their individual members
(e.g., shorter life expectancy). We also know that countries across the globe
vary quite a bit in the degree of social inequality, ranging from 23 for Sweden
to 63 for South Africa, with Germany at 27 and the United States at 45 (CIA,
2013). Among modern western industrialized countries, the United States
has by far the greatest social disparity between those who are at the top
compared to those at the bottom of the society. However, even in European
countries with their relatively less extreme ranges, the consequences of
social inequality can be severe and can be found within a few miles of each
other in a given city. For instance, in Glasgow (Scotland) a man living in
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

1

2

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

1985

2008( )
Little change
in inequality

Increasing inequality
0.50

Decreasing
inequality

0.45
0.40
0.35
0.30
0.25
0.20

ey
re
ec
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Tu
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G

an
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un
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lg
iu
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M
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i
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es
U
ni
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ly
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0.15

Figure 1 Changes in income inequality. Source: OECD Database on Household
Income Distribution and Poverty (OECD, 2011).

Milngavie, the most affluent neighborhood, will on average live 28 years
longer than a man living in Carlton, the poorest neighborhood of the city.
It is important to consider though that this modern-society inequality is different from the inequality of medieval society. In feudalistic societies, social
inequality was an immutable and unchallenged fact of life. People did not
think of the unequal distribution of resources as unjust (Elias, 1969). Moreover, nobody developed the notion of striving to move up in society to reach
a higher social status.
By contrast, modern societies allow and encourage—at least in their
ideology—the individual to move up the social ladder. An individual’s life
course is not predetermined by the position of his or her parents, and thus
the individual has greater opportunities, and with the opportunities the
individual is ascribed a greater responsibility for where she/he ends up on
the social ladder.
INDIVIDUALS AS AGENTS OF THEIR OWN SOCIAL MOBILITY
In modern societies, individuals do not formally inherit their parents’
position in society. Of course, the social status of parents still plays a
large role in shaping the social destiny of their sons and daughters, but
it is mainly through mechanism that influences their offsprings’ access
to and performance in educational institutions and their opportunities to
enter professional careers (e.g., via internships and entry-level jobs). Most
individuals—maybe with the exception of the super-wealthy who inherit
a fortune that will support them throughout their life—have to embark on

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

3

a path of making it in the adult world, an adult world, which is structured
into a multirung system of social status.
Maintaining her parents’ social position for (say) the daughter of a
physician is not a given, but requires reacquiring that status by choosing
appropriate short- and long-term goals for education and career and the
active engagement of parents and in particular the daughter herself. For
someone who comes from a family of low social status (e.g., no-college
degree working class) moving up in society to attain a professional career
position is even harder, because they have fewer family-based resources
and no models within their family to facilitate moving into and completing
higher education and enter a promising professional career. Moving up
probably requires greater personal capacities in terms of intellectual competencies and/or motivational commitment and planfulness on the part of the
individual than merely maintaining, or rather reacquiring, one’s parents’
social status.
MOTIVATIONAL THEORY OF LIFESPAN DEVELOPMENT
My colleagues and I developed the Motivational Theory of Lifespan
Development (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz, 2010), which conceptualizes
individual agency in lifespan development in terms of three basic characteristics: (i) the striving for control in the environment (i.e., primary control)
and of one’s own motivation and emotion (i.e., secondary control), (ii) the
selection of goals for control striving that reflects the control opportunities
available in the present developmental ecology, and (iii) the organization
of behavior into cycles of goal engagement and disengagement (Figure 2)
(Heckhausen, 2011; Heckhausen & Heckhausen, 2010; Heckhausen et al.,
2010). People can be either in a GO mode of engagement with a developmental goal (e.g., bear a child) or a STOP mode of disengaging from
the goal. During the GO mode of goal engagement, all behavioral and
motivational resources should be mobilized to pursue the goal. Then, as
opportunities for successful goal engagement fade away (e.g., time runs out
with biological clock) or costs for competing domains become prohibitive,
the individual should decisively switch to disengagement, without wasting
further resources with half-hearted attempts. For beloved long-term goals
to be given up, the individual might need to use self-protective strategies to
keep the emotional responses at bay. Such an efficient disengagement from
a personal developmental goal can free up resources for engagement with
new or adjusted goals that are still or newly attainable.
Taking control of one’s own development and life course, especially in
regard to social status, requires that the individual figures out the appropriate long- and short-term goals and steps leading to them. Appropriate goals

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Rubicon:
Goal decision

Deadline:
Loss of opportunities

Goal engagement
Not urgent
Optimize
opportunity match,
consequences, and
diversity

Selective
primary control
Selective
secondary control

Urgent
Increased selective
primary and
secondary control
Compensatory
primary control

After failure:
Compensatory
secondary control

After success:
capitalize on
success;
new action cycle

Figure 2 Action-phase model of developmental regulation. Source: Adapted
from Heckhausen (1999).

are those that are feasible in terms of available opportunities in one’s social
ecology and in terms of one’s own resources (e.g., abilities, skills) and which
also do not undermine control in other areas or in the long run, keeping
interdomain and long-term costs low.
Engaging with long-term developmental goals is not a trivial matter.
Individuals have to integrate such engagement with other activities of
everyday life. It is not like deciding on a quick task and then just doing
it because a developmental goal is long-term and the individual needs to
keep coming back to it after spending time and resources on other needed
activities and indeed on other goals (e.g., social relationships). This requires
a lot of volitional control in terms of staying committed to the goal and
making oneself come back to it and initiate the next step. Individuals with
particular strengths in volitional control and motivational self-regulation in
general should have an advantage.
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Successful developmental regulation, according to the motivational theory
of lifespan development (see review in Heckhausen et al., 2010), is to
a large extent a function of individuals engaging with goals when the
opportunities are favorable and disengaging from goals when opportunities
are becoming scarce or goal pursuit has become too costly (e.g., exclusive
focus on athletic competition at expense of general education). Extensive
empirical research on the congruence between goals of control striving and
opportunities for goal attainment has shown that most individuals generally
engage with feasible goals and disengage from futile ones (see review in
Heckhausen et al., 2010). However, the degree to which individuals manage
to match goal opportunities varies with the individual differences in the
use of control strategies even when confronted with similar opportunities

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

5

for goal attainment. Moreover, more adaptive use of control strategies is
associated with better developmental outcomes, including psychological
well-being and even physical health (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Fleeson, 2001;
Heckhausen et al., 2010; Wrosch & Heckhausen, 1999; Wrosch, Schulz, Miller,
Lupien, & Dunne, 2007). There are a few fairly general individual differences
in motivational and volitional self-regulation, which may play a critical part
in how effective someone is in selecting and pursuing his/her life goals (see
also discussion in Heckhausen & Wrosch, 2016). The four discussed here are
by no means a complete set of relevant dispositions for control striving, but
they are likely among the most important.
Planfulness/Reflectiveness in Goal Selection Congruence with available opportunities is critical, so individuals who take into account the social and developmental ecology before choosing a particular goal to pursue, should achieve
better outcomes. Moreover, given the interdependence of life domains, one
needs to consider the concurrent and long-term consequences of engaging
with a goal for other domains of life (e.g., consequences of long-term investing in a career goal for family-related goals). We have used the Optimization
in Primary and Secondary (OPS) Control Scales to assess optimized goal
choice as well as specific primary and secondary control strategies (Heckhausen et al., 2010).
Dispositional Optimism Individuals differ in the extent to which they expect
positive versus negative outcomes to occur in their everyday lives (Scheier
& Carver, 1985) and that has consequences for improved persistence,
more vigorous problem-focused coping, subjective well-being, and physical health (Rasmussen, Wrosch, Scheier, & Carver, 2006). Even though
dispositional optimism has not been studied so far in association with
development-focused control striving, it is likely to enhance the tendency
for engaging with and persisting for ambitious goals. Dispositional optimism should be particularly helpful during volitional phases of action and
when the individual encounters obstacles and setbacks. On the other hand,
dispositional optimism could be problematic in contexts of delicate goal
selection, particularly when it is essential to avoid excessive aspirations and
when the goal selection has to be closely calibrated to the opportunities and
risks in a developmental ecology (Heckhausen & Tomasik, 2002).
Action versus State Regulation.
Individuals differ in the degree and decisiveness with which they are
engaged with a goal or disengaged from a goal. Julius Kuhl and his colleagues have studied the action versus state orientation of individuals as

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

predictors of the following types of behavior: effective focus of behavior,
thoughts, and affect on goal pursuits is characteristic of action-oriented
individuals, whereas state-oriented individuals tend to get stuck in currently
experienced emotions, cognitions, and behaviors as well as past failures
(Kuhl, 1981). These action-regulatory traits are conceptually closely related
to dispositional foundations of primary and secondary control strategies
involved in goal engagement and disengagement, control strategies we
assess using the OPS Scales. Action-oriented individuals can be expected
to better orchestrate primary and secondary control strategies for goal
engagement and disengagement, whereas state-oriented individuals might
get stuck in a previous action phase or overly focus on secondary control
strategies while loosing sight of their function for primary control.
Goal Disengagement Capacities.
This individual difference dimension refers to individuals’ general readiness
to withdraw commitment and effort from the pursuit of unattainable goals
(see review in Wrosch, Scheier, & Miller, 2013). Goal disengagement capacities can affect developmental goal striving in various adaptive ways. First,
disengaging from futile goals is adaptive as such, because it helps avoid frustration. Importantly, disengaging from unattainable goals frees up resources
for engaging with attainable goals and thus helps to attain them. Initial studies on the development of the capacity to disengage from goals indicate that a
sensitive developmental period may be during adolescence, when the experience of depressive symptoms promotes the development of disengagement
capacities, thus rendering the older adolescent more resilient to depression
(Wrosch & Miller, 2009).
WHEN IS REGULATING ONE’S OWN DEVELOPMENT THE MOST CHALLENGING?
Much of everyday behavior, even when directed at long-term goals, such as
attaining an education, building a family, or moving up in one’s career, are
scaffolded by institutions (e.g., school, employer) or one’s social context (e.g.,
expectations and agreements with peers or partner) and thus well buffered
against distractions or motivational conflict. Under normal conditions and
between life-course transitions when opportunities change, individuals do
not have to invest a lot of motivational considerations in deciding which
goals to pursue, and they also do not typically need to invest much volitional effort to stay committed to the goal they are currently pursuing (e.g.,
attain a BA). However, there are certain challenging conditions that call for
the individual agent to step up to make important decisions for a new goal
or whether to disengage from an old goal, enhance volitional commitment or

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

7

use new more intense strategies of goal pursuit. I briefly discuss three such
challenging conditions, a list not meant to be exhaustive.
Major Age-Graded Changes in Opportunities for Goal Pursuit The human life
course is structured by a number of major life transitions, which occur at
certain ages. During these major life transitions, opportunities for old goals
disappear and opportunities for new goals open up. Given that human
behavior is not much regulated by instincts, these discrete changes in
opportunities require an adaptation of the individual in terms of his/her
goal orientations. A facilitating factor may be that to the extent that these
changes are age-related common changes, individuals expect them and can
prepare for them. Expected age-graded changes in opportunities call for
old, now obsolete, goals to be deactivated and new, now feasible, goals to be
selected in accordance with opportunities and potential consequences. This
means the individual as an active agent in her/his development is called for
and challenged.
One of the most consequential of these transitions is the transition from
adolescence to adulthood, which is endowed by a plethora of new opportunities and challenges to complete secondary education, pursue higher education or vocational training, enter a career, become financially independent
from one’s parents, and find a long-term romantic partner (Buchmann &
Kriesi, 2011). During the transition to adulthood, major decision points are
passed and thus the course is set on an individual’s prospects for upward or
downward social mobility. Motivational and regulatory capacities needed to
master these challenges involve analytic abilities and planfulness to assess
opportunities and long-term consequences of educational and career decisions, as well as robust (i.e., resilient and persistent) goal engagement with
chosen goals (see review in Heckhausen & Shane, 2015).
Some major life transitions involve substantial declines in opportunities for goal engagement. If opportunities sink below a certain level, the
individual needs to reorient motivationally by disengaging from obsolete
goals and engaging with new still obtainable goals. One example is the
“biological clock,” that is the diminishing fertility in the fourth decade
of women’s life (Heckhausen et al., 2001). The motivational reorientation
required at such transition points of diminished opportunities is captured
in the developmental deadline model (Figure 2) and reflects high challenges
for motivational self-regulation. Our empirical studies of control striving
around developmental deadlines of child-bearing and of partnerships
indicate that those individuals who better master an opportunity-congruent
switching from urgent goal engagement to goal disengagement are more

8

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

likely to attain better subjective well-being and mental health (Heckhausen
et al., 2001, 2010; Wrosch & Heckhausen, 1999).
Uncertain or Obfuscated Opportunities for Goal Pursuit It is not always clear,
whether pursuing a certain goal will lead to success or not. Sometimes,
opportunities for goal progress are obfuscated by uncertainty about the
boundary conditions or about the future perspective of these opportunities.
This is particularly true for the attainability and the long-term sustainability
of career goals, and even more pronounced under conditions of economic
globalization and the uncertainties that come with it. Globalization has
caused decreasing transparency of opportunities and predictability of
long-term consequences of educational or career decisions (Buchholz et al.,
2009). The most detrimental consequences of uncertainty associated with
globalization are suffered first and foremost by youth just entering the labor
market (Blossfeld, Klijzing et al., 2005), but also by women returning to and
older adults leaving the labor market. Uncertainty is also the result of radical
and sudden societal change, such as in the case of German reunification.
Here, the group most affected were middle-aged adults, who at their
advanced midlife age could neither reinvest in a new career path nor get
ready to retire and thus languished without engagement or disengagement
(Diewald, Huinink, & Heckhausen, 1996).
Lower socioeconomic status may add to the obfuscation of opportunities,
especially as they relate to advanced education. Youth who are the first in
their family to attend college, for example, often do not know about opportunities for graduate education and which career prospects are associated
with it. Thus, even under conditions of equal opportunities, different social
groups may have different access to critical information to make upward
social mobility work for them.
Major Unexpected Losses of Control Some of the most taxing challenges for
developmental regulation are situations of sudden and unexpected loss of
control. Examples are natural disasters, but also health events and processes
of severe and progressive illness and disability. Under such difficult circumstances, it is most essential to preserve still available areas of control and give
up those, which are rapidly getting out of reach. On the basis of the Motivational Theory of Control, we developed a Lines-of-Defense (LoD) model
for managing this latter type of challenge (Heckhausen, Wrosch, & Schulz,
2013). The LoD model specifies a set of lines of defense, ranging in severity of constraints from reestablishing uncompromised health, over getting
other people to help, using technical aids (e.g., hearing aid, wheel chair) to
accepting disability, and giving up certain activities of daily living.

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

9

Another type of circumstance of severe loss of control are processes of rapid
and radical social change (Silbereisen & Chen, 2010). Radical social change
typically involves a relative dissolution of institutional controls, and thus has
the potential for creating opportunities for individual agents to take charge
of their own life. However, deregulation by itself, if not accompanied by economic opportunity, is not conducive to individuals taking initiative to shape
their own future (Silbereisen & Chen, 2010). Under circumstances of severe
dearth of opportunity in parts of the world with economies crippled by political or religious unrest or forbidding climates, the most agentic thing to do is to
pick up and leave. It can be expected that individuals with the strongest disposition for primary control striving coupled with the planfulness of having
the long view of the benefits of leaving a low-control region are the ones who
self-select for self-uprooting and migration. Unfortunately, the very disposition, which makes them migrate, will make it especially aversive for them
to fit in at the lower rungs of the social ladder of the societies they are joining as powerless and resource-poor newcomers. Those who decide to stay in
low-control countries fare best if they disengage from those goals that have
become futile, even if they are as essential goals as getting a job (Tomasik,
Silbereisen, & Heckhausen, 2010).
DIFFERENT SOCIETIES ENTAIL DIFFERENT OPPORTUNITY
STRUCTURES FOR SOCIAL MOBILITY
Western societies vary in the degree to which they emphasize the individual’s
responsibility for moving up in society, with the United States promoting
the most extreme notion of the self-made (wo)man in the ideology of the
“American Dream.” In some way, it seems like a paradox that the nation with
the greatest inequality should sport such lofty ideals of individual agency in
social mobility, but in another way it is not so surprising because it may well
serve as an ideological compensation for the greater social inequality and
underdeveloped social security and welfare system.
Indeed, social inequality and social mobility are strongly negatively related,
as shown in Figure 3 (the Great Gatsby curve). The greater the inequality, the
lesser are the opportunities for social mobility. It is as if in societies with particularly pronounced social inequality the rungs of the ladder are just too far
apart to climb upward (or more than one rung upward), especially for those
at the bottom. For instance, in the United States, individuals coming from
the lowest quintile of income have about a 34% chance to stay in the bottom
quintile and a 22% chance to move up one quintile (Mazumder, 2014). Interestingly, there is “stickiness” at the top too. Being born into the top quintile of
income gives you a 38% chance to stay at the top and a 22% chance to move

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Generational earnings elasticity (less mobility ------>)

0.5

Italy

United Kingdom
United States

France

0.4

Japan
Germany

0.3

New Zealand

Sweden

Canada

Australia

0.2
Finland

Norway
Denmark

0.1
20

30
25
Income inequality (more inequality -------->)

35

Figure 3 The Great Gatsby Curve: more inequality is associated with less
mobility across the generations. Source: Adapted from Corak (2013), Figure 1.

down only one quintile. What about the possibility of jumping from the bottom to the top quintile? This “rags to riches” life-course trajectory is enjoyed
by only 7%. The inverse “riches to rags” scenario is suffered by only 11% of
the top income group (Mazumder, 2014).
When thinking about social mobility in different societies today, there are a
set of characteristics of the society’s social structure and its institutions, which
shape the action field of the individual in critical ways. These are discussed
in the following paragraphs.
ACCESSIBILITY AND EQUALITY OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
Even among Western industrialized countries, access to high-quality primary, secondary, and tertiary education varies widely. Just the examples of
Germany and the United States make this clear. In Germany, the secondary
school system is institutionally segregated into different tiers leading to
college versus vocational training or simply paid work. This system is
unparalleled in transferring social status from generation to generation.
Working class children have to attain significantly better reading scores than
average to be recommended for transfer into the upper-tier school, whereas
upper middle-class and upper-class children can get such a recommendation
with significantly lower than average reading scores (Arnold, Bos, Richert,
& Stubbe, 2007).

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

11

One would think that a unified system such as the common high school in
the United States would provide more equal chances to access a high-quality
educational institution than the three-tiered German school system. However, social inequality of educational access to US schools is conveyed
sociostructurally by differentially endowed schools because the school’s
equipment and teacher pay is a function of the tax income of the community,
and thus directly related to the wealth or poverty of the residents in their
neighborhoods. In the United States, the huge differences in quality and
educational offerings (e.g., number of Advanced Placement classes offered)
at the low end impair students’ chances to be accepted into the top-ranked
colleges.
PERMEABILITY OF EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER TRACKS
In the mid 1990s, Hamilton provided an analysis comparing the United States
and Germany in their links between school and employment, and pointed
out the trade-off between transparency of career outcomes and permeability of career tracks (Hamilton, 1994). He argued that the German vocational
training system provided, high permeability with low transparency but little
permeability of career tracks, whereas the inverse was true for the transition
from school to work in the United States. The essentials of this analyses are
likely still true even though professional and higher-level vocational career
requirements in the United States today include more educational qualifications, whereas in Germany more people end up never really using their college degree or vocational training to work in the specific career their degree
was aimed at (Heinz, 2002; Mayer, 2001).
Regarding the permeability of educational tracks too, Germany has more of a
closed system, especially now with practically all popular majors being subject to severe Numerus Clausus entry constraints, which make it impossible
to switch into these majors. In contrast, given the wide range of institutions in
the tertiary education system of the United States, anyone with a high school
degree can, at least in principle, gain access to some kind of college education
and earn a BA and do this in a major of her own choosing.
CALIBRATION VERSUS AMBITIOUSNESS OF EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER ASPIRATIONS
Given the comparatively low permeability of both educational and career
tracks, German youth have to calibrate even their long-term aspirations
carefully to their currently attained school performance because what they
can get access to in the short run will mostly determine what they can attain
in the long run. In a longitudinal study of middle-tier school graduates who
were applying for apprenticeship positions, we found that the 16-year-old
youths were calibrating their goals for vocational prestige of apprenticeships

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

they planned to apply for closely to their own school performance (Heckhausen & Tomasik, 2002), fine-tuning their aspirations downward when they
were unsuccessful in obtaining offers for an apprenticeship, and upward
after success.
In the Unites States, with more options to move into tertiary education later
and via detours, youth with highly ambitious long-term aspirations have an
advantage. In fact, we found that those high-school graduates in our longitudinal study, who had extremely high ambitions for their long-term educational attainment were the most likely to attain a BA degree or be enrolled in
a 4-year college 4 years after our assessment in the senior year of high school
(Heckhausen & Chang, 2009). Entertaining high ambitions for one’s ultimate
educational achievement (e.g., get a graduate degree), apparently can carry
even a floundering youth from low school performance to ultimate college
success. Moreover, we found in our Los Angeles-based longitudinal study
of high-school graduates that even for short-term goals, picking more ambitious ones (e.g., get into a 4-year college next year) is better for educational
attainment in the long run than adjusting them to what can realistically be
expected for the coming year (Villarreal, Heckhausen, Lessard, Greemberger,
& Chen, 2015).
SCOPE OF SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL EXCLUSION
The scope of social inequality varies a lot across countries (Figure 1) and
has important implications for potential social mobility (Figure 3). Those at
the bottom in societies with large social status differences in income and
resources can have little hope of ever making it far out of their disadvantaged situation. Moreover, certain groups are becoming entirely marginalized and cut off from opportunities, such as those not in employment, education, or training (NEET, Bynner & Parsons, 2002) in the United Kingdom
or the long-term unemployed receivers of Hartz-IV welfare benefits in Germany. Such circumstances should have substantial consequences for an individual’s expectations to overcome the odds and move up the social ladder.
IDEOLOGIES OF SOCIAL MOBILITY
Finally, societies differ in terms of whether and what kind of social mobility
is considered desirable and attainable. Historical and religious causes gave
rise to the most pronounced individualistic and optimistic idea of boundless
social ascent available to everyone who tries hard and persistent enough that
is associated with the rags-to-riches notion of the “American Dream.” The
meritocratic idea that everyone with capabilities and the willingness to try
can make it to the top conveys hope even when that seems unrealistic. The
“American Dream” provides the prospect of upward mobility to everyone

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

13

and thus helps keep in check revolutionary ideas of collective income
redistribution.
In contrast to the ideology of the “American Dream,” European social
and political history of class struggle has set up a fundamentally different
approach of the individual to social inequality. By and large, individuals in
Europe do not see themselves on a lonely individual struggle up the social
ladder but instead view themselves at a certain place in a socially stratified
society (Geissler & Meyer, 2006). Of course, everyone tries to improve his or
her lot in terms of standard of living and quality of work life but not in the
same sense of moving away from and climbing out of one’s social origin as
in the United States. In Europe, social inequality is seen as an undesirable
but inescapable societal reality. To compensate for unequal chances and
resources, the long-standing class struggle led by powerful unions and
political parties has won important battles and created impressive welfare
systems in the major European countries.
THE POWER OF AGENCY: IDEOLOGY, INDIVIDUAL STRIVING,
AND COLLECTIVE MISSION
The example of the United States of America shows that a society’s ideology about social mobility may be a far cry from what it currently actually
provides in terms of opportunities for upward mobility. It is fascinating to
examine how the individual agent navigates these disparities in ideology,
opportunity, own skills, capacities, and resources. In our own research, we
found that under conditions of an elaborate tertiary education system, which
facilitates transfer from community college to 4-year college as present in
California, individuals with extremely optimistic long-term aspirations fare
best in their long-term educational outcomes (Heckhausen & Chang, 2009).
Moreover, those high-school graduates with strong beliefs in the influence
of factors they have some control over, such as their own effort and using
social contacts, were more likely to be robustly engaged with their educational goals (Shane, Heckhausen, Lessard, Greenberger, & Chen, 2012). At
the next transition, the one from college to work, California students generally hold quite ambitious aspirations for climbing the social ladder and
besting their parent’s social status. Again, beliefs about the major causes of
social outcomes play a critical role. We identified two pathways (Shane &
Heckhausen, 2013): One group of students believe that success in society is
due to own ability and effort investment, and they report having more ambitious career goals and being more engaged with these career goals. The other
group of students believes that success is a function of uncontrollable luck,
and this group is more disengaged from their career goals. It will be important to follow these youth further and see whether at some point, those with

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

high control beliefs, ambitions, and engagement become discouraged if they
fail to achieve success, and end up changing their worldviews about success
in life along with giving up their high-flying goals..
Many research groups and longitudinal studies are addressing the transition to adulthood in different countries. It is important to join forces to compare societal conditions in terms of social structure, institutions, and beliefs
about social mobility, and longitudinally trace individuals’ courses of goal
setting, striving, adaptation of means, goal adjustment, and adjustment of
societal beliefs as they navigate the rapids of opportunity and hope, and
exclusion and disappointment. In this research effort, it will be especially
important to identify groups that are marginalized and de facto excluded
from participation in education and/or work (e.g., young men in Southern
European and North African countries), and thus have no chance to improve
their position in society.
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JUTTA HECKHAUSEN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jutta Heckhausen grew up in Germany and did her graduate work
and PhD at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland (advisor:
Dr. H. Rudolph Schaffer), where she studied the way in which infants’
development is promoted by interaction and joint activities with their mothers. In 1984, Jutta Heckhausen joined the Center for Life-Span Psychology

Social Inequality across the Life Course: Societal Unfolding and Individual Agency

17

at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in Berlin (director: Dr.
Paul B. Baltes), where over the years she became a senior scientist with her
own research group. In the 1980s and 1990s, she expanded her research area
to include development in adulthood and old age, formulated the life-span
theory of control with her collaborator Dr. Richard Schulz (University
of Pittsburgh), and launched a research program to test its propositions
and applicability to developmental regulation in adulthood. In 2000, she
joined the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior at UC Irvine.
In 1995/1996, Dr. Heckhausen was a fellow at the Center for Social and
Behavioral Science at Stanford. In 1999, she won the Max Planck Award for
International Collaboration and, in 2014, the Baltes Distinguished Research
Achievement Award. Her numerous books and journal articles are widely
cited (14,636 citations, h-index 44).
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