The links between skills and inequality have long been a central theme inanalyses of social structure and economic development; in recent years bothacademic and political interest in this topic has grown rapidly. For more thanhalf a century, human capital theory has been a cornerstone in analyses ofeconomic development at both the individual and societal level. Despite itsgreat importance, however, the traditional human capital model is incompletein a number of crucial respects. It needs contributions from other disciplinesin order to accurately account for broader inequalities within and across coun-tries. The present volume provides an overview of recent advances in researchon skills and inequality against the backdrop of established insights fromrelated but separate fields of inquiry; mainly economics and sociology but alsophilosophy, human resource management, political science and psychology.By bringing these advances and insights together, we aim to build a new frame-work for research on how unequal living conditions are formed, persist andchange in interplay with human skill formation and development.