PAA Honored Members

Robert D. Mare

Past Honored Member

Robert D. Mare, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Founding Director of the California Center for Population Research UCLA

Robert D. Mare, PhD is Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the California Center for Population Research. He is the 2010 President of the Population Association of America. He is widely known for his contributions to social demography in five major areas: models of educational stratification; marriage markets and assortative mating; statistical methods; neighborhood change; and population models of stratification.

His research on educational transitions spawned an entire field of research on educational transitions and he is one of the leading specialists in educational stratification in the world today. Mare’s work on assortative mating has shown, among other things, that educational homogamy has increased over time and that, within cohorts, homogamy increases with age as a consequence of divorces, remarriages, and educational upgrading. Mare uses statistical methods, not for their own sake, but as a tool to think more clearly about social phenomena and to find better ways to address substantive research questions.

The hallmark of Mare’s recent work is a creative effort to reconnect micro and macro perspectives on a diverse array of social and demographic processes, including neighborhood change, the relationship of education and fertility, and the distribution of educational attainment among U.S. women in the second half of the 20th century.

Mare has been widely recognized for his scholarship and played a number of important roles in professional associations. He has just been elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral and Social Sciences, a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Lazarsfeld Memorial Award. He has also served in a number posts at the University of Wisconsin, UCLA, and PAA and as editor of the journal Demography. He is an excellent teacher and a highly valued intellectual leader, colleague and mentor.

List of Donors

Suzanne Bianchi  I-Fen Lin Nora Cate Schaeffer
Mark Browning Vida Maralani Christine Schwartz
Jennie Brand Karen Mason Pamela Smock
Elizabeth Bruch William Mason Herbert L. Smith
Cameron Campbell Sara McLanahan Megan Sweeney
David Cort Kelly Musick Karl Taeuber
Aimee Dechter Alberto Palloni Donald J. Treiman
Barbara Entwisle Anne Pebley Roger Waldinger
Patrick Heuveline James Raymo Christopher Winship
Margo Jackson Arthur Sakamoto Lawrence Wu
Nelson Lim Robert J. Sampson Yu Xie