Solga's research focuses on the causes of social inequality and on society’s possibilities for removing such inequalities, for example, through educational measures and labor market policy. Solga is the director of the research area at WZB devoted to education, work, and life chances. She completed her university education in Berlin at Humboldt-Universität, before German reunification. Beginning in 1992 she worked for many years at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. In 2005 Solga was appointed to a professorship at the University of Göttingen, and in 2008 she accepted an appointment as a professor at the Institute of Sociology at Freie Universität. Her main research focus is work, the labor market, and employment.

Professor Solga has been a visiting professor at Yale University and ETH Zürich, to name just two. Continually seeking new possibilities for interdisciplinary research on education, she is involved in numerous collaborative research groups as well as academic and social bodies. She is the co-editor of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie.