Martin Kohli

Based on his premise of the historical genesis of the life course, Kohli made the influential proposal that the life course should be understood as an institution.[5][6] Only through decreasing mortality and the notion that death moves into old age does the life course become perceived as such and thus becomes plannable. In this context, Kohli understood the life course as twofold: one in the sense of an institutionally anchored program, a formal course of life as it is shown, for example, in educational, professional, and family careers, and secondly a culturally shaped subjective biographical perspective. With this interpretation of the life course, Kohli made a major contribution to life course research. As the life course structures the life-time horizon, it can become the basis of biographical balancing. The special quality of the biographical approach for sociology lies in the fact that the relationship between individuality and society can be recognized particularly well in the analysis of biographies.[7] In addition, Kohli dealt with different life course regimes and the differentiation of different life courses according to socio-demographic criteria. With his conception of the institutionalized life course, Kohli made it clear that the life course is to be understood as an independent social institution in the form of a system of rules that organizes central areas of life around the modern organization of gainful employment.[8]

Following his concept of the life course, Kohli studied intergenerational relationships and intergenerational conflicts. With his research on intergenerational transfers within families, Kohli also obtained important insights into the debate on the social welfare contract between generations. He could show both for Germany and in comparative studies for other countries that the transfers from old to young within families have not come to a halt as a result of the establishment of the welfare state..[9][10] Kohli’s empirical research further focused on the relationship between public funding and private transfers. Kohli also contributed to theoretically frame the concept of generation.[11] He correlated familial generations (which on the micro level primarily refer to the members of a lineage) with societal generations. The societal generation can be differentiated by its cultural, political and economic dimensions.[12] Yet again, Kohli was concerned with the issues of social inequality and intergenerational tensions and conflicts and how they are mediated by family and politics.

For his empirical research, Kohli drew on data from the Aging Survey, which was developed by the FALL research group and first conducted in 1996.[13] In the modern institutionalized life course, "retirement" has developed into an independent phase of life, which confronts sociology with novel theoretical and empirical tasks. The Aging Survey created a central empirical basis for research on the "second half of life" in an aging society. It provided a viable basis both for basic research in the sense of a comprehensive analysis of the forms of socialization in old age and for social reporting.[14] In addition, the survey - now based at the German Center of Gerontology in Berlin - had an interdisciplinary approach from the beginning and used both sociological and psychological survey instruments. Together with Harald Künemund, Kohli was also involved in the development of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which was conducted for the first time in 2004. Such comparative European research was a central motif in Kohli's later work. With the help of these comparative data sets, it was possible, for example, to analyze family regimes in connection with nationally specific welfare regimes.