Robert Mason Hauser is an American sociologist. He is the Vilas Research and Samuel F. Stouffer professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where has served as director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and is director of the Center for Demography of Health and Aging.
Hauser has a B.A. in economics (1963) from the University of Chicago and an M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) in sociology from the University of Michigan. His present research is involved with trends in educational progression and social mobility in the US among racial and ethnic groups, the effects of families on social and economic inequality, and changes in socioeconomic standing, health, and well-being across the life course (Wisconsin Longitudinal Study). From 1967-1969 he was on the faculty of the department of sociology and anthropology at Brown University before his appointment in the department of sociology at the University of Madison-Wisconsin in 1969. He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and the University of Bergen. Hauser has served on several committees of the United States National Research Council. He is the author of five books and numerous articles.
Hauser is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (1984) and a fellow of the American Statistical Association (1978), the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Education (1998), the American Philosophical Society (2005), the Gerontological Society of America (2007) and the American Educational Research Association (2008). The American Sociological Association chose Hauser for the Paul F. Lazarsfeld award in research methods (1986) and the Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Teaching of Sociology (2003).