A study was conducted to identify important background, schooling, and labor force participation determinants of socioeconomic achievement (occupational position, earnings, work satisfaction). Two questions underlaid the analyses: Does social background directly affect material and psychological success in the labor market? And, if so, what are the specific schooling and market mechanisms which are responsible for the intergenerational transmission of inequality? The analyses dealt with these issues as they relate to a series of life-cycle models of the "stratification process" and a specific data set consisting of 947 white men, first surveyed as high school sophomores in 1955 and followed up in 1970. The socioeconomic life-cycle model was used to explain the observed relationship between social background and educational and labor market achievements. It was found that only educational attainment substantially affected occupational achievement, but social background (parental income and religious background), years of schooling completed, and several postschool "human capital investments" positvely affected annual earnings. Among the more important labor market experiences were current job experience, labor supply, and on-the-job training. Work satisfaction, and other indicators of psychological success in the work place, were largely impervious to these antecedent statuses and experiences. Psychological success, however, was modestly affected by material success. (NTIS/TA)