After the last global economic crisis, there are increasing evidences and a growing perception in many societies that social mobility has been declining and the opportunities to maintain and improve certain socioeconomic standards have been limited, which necessarily meant an increase of the socioeconomic inequality. In this way, recent studies have shown that in most of developed countries, four or five generations would be need for children from lower social status families to reach mean levels of earnings. These facts are not independent and we can find their roots historically. Important studies from the sociological and economic literature argued that historical social mobility and inequality could shed light on current problems in our societies mainly during periods of transition.

Accordingly, in both historical and contemporary societies, an important interrelation existed between demographic phenomena and social and/or economic inequalities. Thus, as the levels of inequality are higher, the higher are the morbidity and mortality; as well as the fertility control mechanisms neutralising the effects of disparity even before the Demographic Transition; or the in and out migrations that channelled inequality within and between societies. Nonetheless, the knowledge about this interaction on demography and social and economic inequalities has been done traditionally at the macro level, with aggregate data and with a synchronic perspective.

My research within the Landskrona Population Study (LPS) merges tools of family demography with the analysis of economic inequality and social stratification at the micro level. Therefore, my research aims at analysing how demographic behaviours affect long- and short-term socioeconomic inequality and social reproduction processes. Inequality mirrors how the resources and opportunities are distributed among individuals, thus implying the need for considering individuals as active agents in the generation of inequality as part of determined demographic and economic systems, which grants to each individual specific socioeconomic characteristics.