Untitled Document

Research

Robert M. Hauser

Ph.D., University of Michigan
Professor, Department of Sociology
Director, Center for Demography of Health and Aging
hauser@ssc.wisc.edu
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/faculty/show-person.php?person_id=25

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~hauser/

Social Stratification and Inequality Across The Life Course

My research interests lie in relationships among education, occupation, and income, their sources in families of orientation, the social, psychological, and economic processes by which they are reproduced from generation to generation, and their social, psychological, and biomedical consequences. In pursuing these interests, I have developed or worked with two types of data: longitudinal studies of the life course and repeated, cross-section studies of the U.S. population. Chief among the former is the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch/, a longitudinal study of 10,000 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. The latter have included two repeated cross-section surveys of American men, the Occupational Changes in a Generation Surveys (OCG), which were carried out in 1962 and 1973; the Surveys of Income and Program Participation of 1986 to 1988; the General Social Survey (GSS) of the National Opinion Research Center; and accumulated Current Population Surveys from March (the General Demographic Supplement) and October (the School Enrollment Supplement).

WLS graduates have been followed up in 1964, 1975, 1992-93, and 2004-06. The sample was supplemented with some 2000 interviews with siblings in 1977 and with more than 4500 sibling interviews in 1993-94 and 2005-06. The 2004-06 round of the survey included spouses and widow(er)s (of graduates and siblings). The WLS includes measurements of academic ability and aspiration in youth and adulthood, as well as detailed marital, fertility, and career histories. In the 1992-94 and 2004-06 rounds of the WLS, content included economic standing, social contacts, and many measures of mental and physical well-being. The WLS data are also rich in relational terms; they permit us to look at people's lives, not only in relation to families and communities of orientation, but also places of employment, high school friendships, brothers and sisters, spouses, and children. In my work with the Wisconsin data, I have tried to get at the fine structure of socioeconomic achievement processes, especially at the role of aspiration, ability, and social support. I am presently leading a consortium of investigators in new studies of the WLS graduates during the retirement years. These will be based upon home interviews in 2009-10 with generous support from the National Institute on Aging.

One of my major interests is in the effects of the family of orientation across the life course. Several surveys, including the 1973 OCG survey, the WLS, and 1994 GSS, and a GSS supplement, the Survey of American Families (SAF), include data from or about brothers and sisters of the primary respondents. By permitting us to measure sibling resemblance across the life course in large samples, these data provide a powerful means of tracing the lifelong influences of family origins.

Representative Publications
Reither, E., Hauser, R.M., & Swallen, K. (2009). Predicting adult health and mortality from adolescent facial characteristics in yearbook photographs. Demography, 46(1), 27-41.

Frederick, C., & Hauser, R.M. (2008). Have we put an end to social promotion? Changes in grade retention rates among children aged 6 to 17 from 1972 to 2005. Demography, 45(3), 719-740.

Springer, K.W., & Hauser, R.M. (2006). An assessment of the construct validity of Ryff's Scales of Psychological Well-Being: Method, mode, and measurement effects. Social Science Research, 35, 1079-1101.

Springer, K.W., Hauser, R.M., & Freese, J. (2006). Bad news indeed for Ryff�s Six-Factor Model of Well-Being. Social Science Research, 35, 1119-1130.

Hauser, R.M., & Andrew, M. (2006). Another look at the stratification of educational transitions: The logistic response model with partial proportionality constraints. In Ross M. Stolzenberg (Ed.), Sociological methodology (pp. 1-26). Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell and American Sociological Association.

Hauser, R.M. (2005). Survey response in the long run: The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Field Methods, 17, 3-29.

Hauser, R.M., Edley Jr., C.F., Koenig, J.A, & Elliott, S.W. (Eds.). (2005). National Research Council. Measuring literacy: Performance levels for adults. Report of the Committee on Standards for Adult Literacy Board on Testing and Assessment, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Hauser, R.M., & Willis, R.J. (2004). Survey design and methodology in the health and retirement study and the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Population and Development Review, 30(Supplement), 209-235.

Sewell, W.H., Hauser, R.M., Springer, K.W., & Hauser, T.S. (2004). As we age: The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, 1957-2001. In Kevin Leicht (Ed.), Research in social stratification and mobility (Vol. 20, pp. 3-111). Greenwich, Connecticut: Elsevier Scientific Publishers.

Krahn, D., Freese, J., Hauser, R.M., Barry, K., & Goodman, B. (2003). Alcohol use and cognition at mid-life: The importance of adjusting for baseline cognitive ability and educational attainment. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 27, 1-5.

Sewell, W.H., Hauser, R.M., Springer, K.W., & Hauser, T.S. (2002). As we age: The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, 1957-2001. In K. Leicht (Ed.), Research in social stratification and mobility. Greenwich: Jai Press.

Warren, J.R., Sheridan, J.T., & Hauser, R.M. (2002). Occupational stratification across the life course: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. American Sociological Review, 67(3), 432-55.

Hauser, R.M., & Warren, J.R. (1997). Socioeconomic indexes for occupations: A review, update, and critique. In Adrian E. Raftery (Ed.), Sociological methodology (pp. 177-298). Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.

Warren, J.R., & Hauser, R.M. (1997). Social stratification across three generations: New evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. American Sociological Review, 62, 561-72.

Hauser, R.M. and Sweeney, M.M. (1997). Does Poverty in Adolescence Affect the Life Chances of High School Graduates? Pp. 541-95 in Greg Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (eds.) Consequences of Growing Up Poor. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Hauser, R.M., & Huang, M-H. (1997). Verbal ability and socioeconomic success: A trend analysis. Social Science Research, 26(September), 331-76.

Kuo, H-H.D., & Hauser, R.M. (1995). Trends in family effects on the education of black and white brothers. Sociology of Education, 68, 136-60.

Hauser, R.M., & Sewell, W.H. (1986). Family effects in simple models of education, occupational status, and earnings: Findings from the Wisconsin and Kalamazoo studies. Journal of Labor Economics, July 4 (Part 2), S83-S115.

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