Robert Denis Mare, Distinguished Sociologist and Demographer, Dies at 69

Robert D. Mare, an eminent sociologist and demographer who recently retired from his position as Distinguished Professor of Sociology at UCLA, died of leukemia in his home in Marina Del Rey, California, on Monday February 1, 2021.

Robert Mare was a world leader in the areas of social stratification, sociological methods, and demographic processes. He contributed definitive scholarship on social trends in schooling, employment, and assortative mating. His latest work considered dynamic analysis of residential mobility and multigenerational social mobility.

Mare’s first major contribution was published in a 1980 article in the Journal of the American Statistical Association, in which he convincingly argued that factors influencing educational attainment differed in importance by transition points, such as the transition from high school completion to college. In doing so, Mare found something that others had missed: family resources mattered most earlier, rather than later, in the educational process. As students move through the system, their own performance becomes more important and their parents’ resources matter less. The combination of an innovative approach and counter-intuitive finding came to be known as the “Mare Model.” To this day the Mare Model continues to be used, debated, challenged, and improved upon by sociologists and economists studying educational inequality.

Mare’s subsequent work in quantitative sociology and social demography addressed a broad range of areas – statistical methods, demography, social stratification – as he moved beyond standard questions of how individuals’ socioeconomic status is reproduced across generations to broader issues of how social hierarchies reproduce themselves. In a highly influential paper, Mare showed that marriages between people with different amounts of schooling were less likely for the highly educated. College goers were more likely to marry other college goers, and that tendency was increasing. A key implication of an increase in educational assortative mating is that it can increase inequality in family resources and children’s socioeconomic achievement. In the decade before his retirement, Mare focused on one of the oldest, most vexing sociological problems: how a combination of individual behaviors at the micro level leads to societal changes. Studying the connection between family structure and poverty, educational assortative mating, and residential mobility and segregation, Mare’s latest work applied advanced statistical techniques to micro-data to model the determinants of individual social and demographic outcomes and then used simulations to examine alternative scenarios and illustrate the implications of these scenarios for population changes. This work advanced our understanding of fundamental social processes, such as residential segregation by race. Until his death, he had been working with his collaborators to model the effects of demographic events such as marriages, having children, and death on multigenerational inequality.

At both UCLA and the University of Wisconsin, where he was Professor of Sociology prior to coming to UCLA, Mare was legendary in mentoring young scholars. In the words of Elizabeth Bruch, one of Mare’s recent doctoral students and now Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, “Rob offered a road map for the process of research: how to navigate, how to get unstuck, what to do with confusion and despair, and how to find joy and discovery. Most importantly, he made the otherwise isolating experience sociable, even fun.” Esther Freidman, another of Mare’s doctoral students and now Social and Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation, said: “Conversations with Rob were the highlight of graduate school – always intense and electrifying, whether focused on the lofty or the everyday. There was a strong feeling of shared mission. He managed to instill in his graduate students a sense that we are all part of something special and significant.”

Born in North Vancouver, Canada in 1951 to Helen and Arthur Mare, he completed his bachelor’s degree at Reed College in 1973 and his Ph.D. at the University Michigan in 1977. Between 1977 and 1997, he was on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he directed the Center for Demography and Ecology between 1989 and 1994. He joined the faculty at UCLA in sociology and was the founding director of the California Center for Population Research at UCLA beginning in 1998. He also held an appointment in statistics at UCLA.

Mare’s contributions were widely recognized by social and population scientists. He was elected President of the Population Association of America in 2009, President of the Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28) in 2006, and fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences in 2010. For his lifetime contributions to sociological methodology, the Methodology Section of the American Sociological Association awarded him the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award for lifetime achievement in 1999. For his career of research on inequality he received the Robert M. Hauser Award from the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility section of the American Sociological Association in 2016. His published articles received multiple awards.

A highly respected and well-liked scholar, Mare will be dearly missed by a large international community of sociologists and demographers who admire him and his work. His scholarship and mentorship will continue to influence future generations of social scientists who study the intersection of demography, family, and social inequality. In the words of Robert Sampson, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, “Rob Mare was a brilliant scholar who made major contributions to demography, stratification, and methodology. His work on the multi-generational transmission of inequality, for example, was pathbreaking in my view. Rob’s keen insights were essential to the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey wave of data collection and our analysis of persistence and change in spatial inequality over two decades in greater Los Angeles.”

Mare is survived by Judith Seltzer, also recently retired Professor of Sociology at UCLA, his spouse and colleague since their graduate studies at the University of Michigan. Contributions in Robert Mare’s honor may be made to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank (https://www.lafoodbank.org/) or other local foodbanks.

Yu Xie, Princeton University

Jennie E. Brand, UCLA

Michael Hout, NYU

Robert Hauser, American Philosophical Society and UW-Madison

Petr Matějů, 1950 – 2017

In the early hours of Friday, June 16 2017, the renowned Czech sociologist Petr Matějů passed away after a long illness, at the age of 66.

Petr Matějů was an exceptionally transformative, hardworking and imaginative sociologist. After a certain hesitation between theatrical and sociological careers, he decisively took the less visible but more adventurous path. In the 1970s, during the normalization period of communist Czechoslovakia, he began to develop his expertise in social stratification, inequality and mobility, utilizing structural equation methods. His methodological expertise was strengthened by his 1987 research stay at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became a student and friend of Robert M. Hauser. He joined the RC28 community in 1984 in Budapest, and has been an integral member ever since. His commitment to RC28 is reflected in the fact that since his involvement, he was only one of a few researchers to host RC28 meetings twice, the 1991 spring meeting in Prague and the 2007 spring meeting in Brno.

After the collapse of communism, he was the leading scientific authority in the quantitative analysis of the Czech social transformation. Along with Donald Treiman, Iván Szelényi, and others, he played a key role in project Social Stratification in Eastern Europe after 1989 and Circulation of Elites, which produced seminal comparative research of social stratification and mobility in five post-communist countries. He established Czech participation in the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) in 1992, before many other post-communist countries, as well as the International Social Justice Program (ISJP), the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), and countless other surveys of students and adults.

His analyses of social transformation, inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, shed light on the transformation of social and political capital into economic capital as the dominant strategy of success in the post-communist transition, particularly in the reproduction of elites. Educational attainment, as an individual’s investment decision, was of primary importance in his work. In his consistent vision, the openness of the system and the equality of educational opportunities had not only economic (competitiveness), but also social (as a mechanism of social justice) and political significance (as a condition of the deepening the rootedness of democracy).

Petr Matějů rejected research only for its own sake, and sought to identify the policy implications of his empirical findings. Along with Jiří Večerník and a large team of researchers, in the 1990s he carried out the project “Social Trends: Research – Archive – Publications – Education,” in the framework of which was established the Czech Sociological Data Archive and the integrative book Ten Years of Rebuilding Capitalism: Czech Society after 1989. In 2002, he established the Institute for Social and Economic Analyses (ISEA) in Prague to conduct independent policy research. His research on educational inequality became the cornerstone of the Czech Government’s White Paper of Tertiary Education, which aimed to expand educational opportunities at the tertiary level and enhance the independence of universities from the state. From 2007-2008, he was selected into the international team of Fulbright New Century Scholars on the theme “Higher Education in the 21st Century – Access and Equity.” From 2006-2011 he also represented the Czech Republic in the Education Policy Committee of the OECD.

Despite being so policy oriented – or precisely because of it – he understood the fundamental importance of basic research and was as a foremost advocate of public research funding. With that goal, in 2006-2010 he was an active member of the Czech Government’s Council on Research, Development and Innovation and from 2008-2014 he was the President of the Czech Science Foundation. In that significant capacity, he implemented a much deeper internationalization of the scientific review process, supported the funding of large projects most likely to lead to scientific breakthroughs, and secured increases in government support for basic research.

Through all of these often exhausting responsibilities, Petr Matějů never ceased to conduct his research activity, even in the last days of his life. The breadth of his Czech and international publications, including voluminous edited volumes, is impressive, and has made him the most cited Czech sociologist. A number of his articles and the co-authored book (in Czech) The Power of Beauty: Does Beauty and Attractiveness Help Achieve Life Success? are just before publication. In addition, we cannot forget his significant teaching activity at multiple universities in Prague, Brno and abroad. Many of the most notable contemporary Czech sociologists worked closely with him or studied under his guidance, thus training an entire generation of Czech sociologists.

While his research and policy reforms were not agreed to by all, even his critics acknowledged that he was a leading mind of his generation, particularly in the areas of social, educational and gender inequality. And while he has departed from us so early, he leaves behind an extensive body of work that continues to live on and will be critically developed and extended.

Michael L. Smith, Ph.D., Senior Researcher, Institute for Social and Economic Analyses And Economics Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences (CERGE-EI)

Jaap Dronkers

It is with great sadness that we have to announce that our great colleague and good friend professor Jaap Dronkers has died on March 30, 2016. On Easter Sunday he was struck by a CVA, from which he did not recover.

Jaap was one of the most influential Dutch sociologists, and published some two hundred articles and book chapters on inequality of educational opportunities, school quality, educational system differences, migrants, divorce and nobility. His work appeared in the most renowned social-scientific journals. In 2013 he was awarded the honorary doctorate from the University of Turku (Finland) and an honorary membership of the Dutch Sociological Association and in 2009 he received the Professor dr. JMG Leune Award for his contribution to educational innovation.

But Jaap did not limit his work to the academic debate. A great believer in the public responsibilities of social scientists, Jaap appeared regularly in the news and social media with his research and was not afraid to touch upon'delicate' subjects if he thought that It made him popular among journalists and students, but not always among politicians and administrators. But he was willing to take a stand if he thought that the truth was served.

He has inspired numerous young students who worked with him writing a master or PhD thesis. Many of these ended up in science and for them he was a great mentor. With his open-mindedness, his integrity, his erudition, his enthusiasm and his love for sociological research he was not only an example for his students, but an example to all his colleagues as well.

With all his charm, gentility, and humor, Jaap had a unique personality and he was truly one-of-a-kind. Nobody can replace him and we will miss him dearly. We wish his wife Tonny, his children and their partners Wouter and Frederike, Judith and Peter, and his grandchildren Aurélie and Ronja much strength in the coming period.

(from Newsletter message, 2016)

Alan C. Kerckhoff

Alan C. Kerckhoff, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and former chairman of the Department of Sociology at Duke University, died December 21, 2001, following a long illness. He is survived by his wife, Sylvia, a son and a daughter, and four grandchildren ..

Educated at Kent State, Oberlin, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD, 1953), Alan's early appointments in a long and distinguished career included Vanderbilt University and the Office of Social Science Programs of the Air Force before he moved to Duke University in 1958. His tenure at Duke spanned four decades during which he distinguished himself by his devotion to graduate education in sociology, the enhancement of sociology in the South and the international study of social stratification and education. He achieved his professorship in 1964 and chaired the sociology. department at Duke twice (1972-1976 and 1981-1986). His scholarship, which was recognized both nationally and internationally, was confirmed by visiting appointments at Nuffield College, Oxford; the University of Stockholm; an NSF Senior Postdoctoral Fellowships at the University of London and at Stanford University.

Alan's service to ASA and to national research organizations was extensive and varied. He served on ASA selection committees for distinguished contributions to scholarship and the Sorokin Award. He also chaired the Sociology of Education Section of ASA. He served nationally as a member of the Advisory Panel, Division of Social Science, NSF (1964-1966) and chaired the Human Development Study Section of NIH (1978-1980). He was active in serving on editorial boards for major scholarly publications such as ASR and Social Forces and editing ASA's Sociology of Education and the Annual Research in Sociology of Education of JAI Press.

For the last quarter century Alan's research was recognized by persistent funding from the National Science Foundation, and also from the Spencer Foundation. He authored or edited eleven books, mostly on social stratification and education; twenty-four book chapters; and over fifty articles in refereed journals. Three articles were in press at the time of his death.

Alan was one of the world's leading scholars in the comparative study of educational systems and their impact on status attainment in the early life course. Perhaps his most important and sustained contribution was the comparative study of education and social mobility in Britain from which he published articles Books over a period of twenty years. This research earned his becoming a Fellow of the National Academy of Education and a Willard Waller Career Award of the Sociology of Education Section of ASA. He also developed important metrics for comparing educational attainment in industrialized societies.

And he countered vigorously the growing congressional criticism of the National Science Foundation at that time. The Society awarded Alan its highest honor, membership in its Roll of Honor, in recognition of his contributions to the Society that always 00 the highest standards of scholarship.

Behind the scholarship was a man deeply dedicated to graduate education and to his students, Frank Bean, a former student of Alan who is now professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, recalls. Alan had just begun a major funded research project shortly Before he died, the last of several such awards after he retired. And as always, he made graduate students his colleagues.

Alan always used his research for mentoring, for introducing students to the highest standards of investigative inquiry. He was generous in sharing credit with those who worked with him. And he was always ready to help students in financial or personal difficulties. The successful intellectual and professional careers of many sociologists today owe a great deal to the support Alan gave them as graduate students.

Aage B. Sørensen

Professor of Sociology at Harvard University and one of the world's leading authorities on social stratification and the sociology of education, died on Wednesday, 18 April 2001, in Boston, Massachusetts, less than a month before his 60th birthday. He had been in poor health since February 2000 after falling on the ice near his home in Cambridge.

Professor Sørensen made important contributions to our understanding of how educational, occupational and income achievements are enhanced or constrained by their organizational and social settings. Drawing on both sociology and economics, he developed a path-breaking set of theoretical concepts, mathematical models, and methodological techniques that he then applied to a wide array of subjects. He was adept in income for phenomena as diverse as rates of learning in elementary school reading groups and promotion patterns in large industrial corporations. , but also the opportunities and constraints of the organizational structures in which individuals act. Some of his earliest academic work showed how chances of advancement differ depending on whether educational and occupational achievement is subject to an open market process or is closed to competitors outside a system.

Professor Sørensen's latest research was focused on understanding recent changes in social inequalities, including rising wage differences between white-collar and blue-collar workers. He sought to determine the extent to which these results from new work arrangements for profit-sharing. His research demonstrated. Clearly that changes in individual endowments need not alter inequality in the social distribution of outcomes. Policies to decrease income inequality by expanding educational opportunities, for example, fail if the prevailing structure of opportunity within a labor market remains unchanged. While developing these ideas, Professor Sørensen authored or co-authored over 100 journal articles, book chapters and book reviews, and co-authored or co-edited five books.

Professor Sørensen was especially active as a teacher at both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard, serving as mentor to an unusually large number of graduate students, many of whom currently hold faculty positions at universities throughout the world. In April of this year, his accomplishments in graduate teaching were honored by an "Excellence in Mentoring Award" presented by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard.

Professor Sørensen was born 13 May 1941 in Silkeborg, Denmark. In 1967 he was the first recipient of a master's degree in Sociology from the University of Copenhagen. He went on to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where he earned a Ph.D. in Social Relations in 1971. From 1971 to 1984, Professor Sørensen taught at the University of Wisconsin, serving as department chair in Sociology from 1979 to 1982. He was appointed to the faculty at Harvard in 1984. As chair of the Sociology Department from 1984 until 1992. From 1994 until his injury he was chair of Harvard's Joint Doctoral Program in Organizational Behavior. Throughout his academic career Sørensen participated actively in European sociology, with extended periods of teaching, study, consulting, and research in Denmark,Norway, and Germany. He was instrumental in restructuring the Institute of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, and served for many years on the board of the Danish National Science Foundation.

Professor Sørensen is survived by his wife, Annemette, the director of the Henry A. Murray Research Center at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study; his son, Jesper, an Associate Professor in the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; daughter- in-law, Patricia Chang, an Associate Research Professor of Sociology and Assistant Director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College; and three grandchildren, Nikolaj, Benjamin and Chloe.

Rudolf Andorka

On June 30 1997 Rudolf Andorka passed away, after a long battle with cancer.

Andorka was a veteran member of our research committee on social stratification, which he joined as one of the pioneers of the second round of national stratification surveys in the early 1970’.He was the principal investigator of the 1973 Hungarian stratification and life history study, which became one of the primary sources on stratification patterns in a socialist society. He published widely on stratification patterns in Hungary, and also in comparative perspective.

Rudy came to the meetings for many years and served as the RC28 president in 1986-1990. He was liked and admired by us all, and we will miss his outstanding contributions to stratification research and sociology at large, his commitment to universal academic standards, and his pleasant personality and great wisdom.

Kaare Svalastoga

In May of 1997 Karra Svalastoga died, after a long illness. Professor Svalastoga chaired as the President of RC28 from 1974 to 1978.

He was born in Norway, in 1914, and obtained a master’s degree in History from the University of Oslo in 1946. Svalastoga then went to the U.S. and obtained a PHD. In sociology from the University of Washington, where he studied with George Lundberg. Lundberg’s rather extreme behaviorist orientation made a profound and lasting impact on him. He became acting Professor of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1952 and was appointed to the first and only Chair of Sociology there in 1956, a position he kept until he retired in 1984.

Svalastoga was an unusually gifted and original scholar with a very strong commitment to developing sociology as a scientific discipline. He was a highly respected and frequent participants in the meetings of RC28 until the early 1980s.

Karra Svalastoga made major contributions to research on stratification and social mobility in a number of books, texts and articles that he had written on this subject. His book Prestige, Class and Mobility (1959) is an extraordinarily rich treatment of stratification and mobility in Denmark and is rightfully treated as a classic in the first generation of national mobility studies.