Time budgets, life histories and social position

This paper falls into two parts. It has an initial brief theoretical discussion of the use of well structured short- and long-term narrative accounts of individuals' life experiences (respectively time-diary and work/life histories) in establishing the extent of their personal resources, and hence, ultimately, their social position. The second section discusses the development of a new social-positional indicator (currently called the Interim Essex Score or IES), and illustrates its use in an investigation of the consequences of women's career breaks on their subsequent levels of access to economic resources.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]