Lucas SAGE, Luck and Predictability in the Life Course, With Arnout VAN DE RIJT, Fabrizio BERNARDI and William FOLLEY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 52, 2026

Abstract

There is an emerging recognition among sociological theorists that luck may play a substantial role in life course achievement. There is also a nascent empirical literature that finds life outcomes to be unpredictable and unexpected life events to be a likely cause. A third literature of causal event studies provides thousands of point estimates of the life course consequences of random events. This review brings these literatures together under a unified framework.