Skill Formation: Interdisciplinary and Cross-National Perspectives

Skills are the scarcest resource in the 21st century. But there is surprisingly little consensus on how they are best acquired. This is the first book to provide an up-to-date analysis of the concept of skill formation within the social sciences and includes contributions of original research from leading scholars in psychology, economics, political science, and sociology. This collection of essays addresses topics ranging from skill learning and measurement, to institutional and policy differences between countries, to skill formation across the life course and socioeconomic groups.

Heike Solga is professor of sociology at the Institute for Sociology at the Georgia Augusta University Göttingen, Germany. She is a member of the board of directors of the Institute for Sociological Research Göttingen (SOFI), and from 2000-2005, she was head of the Independent Research Group named 'Lack of Training: Employment and Life Chances of the Less Educated' at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.

Karl Ulrich Mayer is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Yale University and Co-Director of the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course (CIQLE). He is co-editor of After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the Transformation of East Germany and The Berlin Aging Study: From 70 to 100 (Cambridge University Press).