EN
The study focuses on the theme of life chances as an opportunity for a full-fledged life and people's livelihood. The first part of the paper focuses on the main conceptual frameworks of lifestyle chances. On the basis of these, an outline of the basic social mechanisms that decide on the real distribution of the life chances of social actors is formulated. Key is presented: performance-distributive, redistributive, control and sociable mechanisms. The second part of the contribution focuses on the analysis of subjective perceptions of life opportunities through a secondary analysis of selected relevant issues from international ISSP research showing subjective assessment of the possibilities and factors of life success and self-realization of people during the transformation development of Slovak society.