Michael “Mike” Hout uses demographic methods to study social change in inequality, religion, and politics. He is co-principal investigator on the General Social Survey (GSS), a long-running NSF project. His current work uses the GSS to study changing occupational hierarchies and social mobility since 1972. He is organizing through a National Academy of Sciences standing committee, the American Opportunity Study, an inquiry into long-term trends in social mobility based on census records linked across generations. With Kim Voss and Kristin George, he has studied college dropout and completion between 1982 and 2004. Mike’s books include Century of Difference (with Claude Fischer, 2006), The Truth about Conservative Christians (with Andrew Greeley, 2006), Inequality by Design (with five Berkeley colleagues, 1996), Following in Father’s Footsteps: Social Mobility in Ireland (1989), and Mobility Tables (1983). A couple of illustrative papers include “Social and Economic Returns to Higher Education in the United States” (2012), “The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change” (with Greeley and Wilde, 2001) and “How 4 Million Irish Immigrants Came to be 40 Million Irish Americans” (with Goldstein, 1994).
Hout’s honors include election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1997, the National Academy of Sciences in 2003, and the American Philosophical Society in 2006. Mike’s education includes a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh in history and sociology and masters and PhD from Indiana University in sociology. Before coming to NYU in 2013, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1985 to 2013, and the University of Arizona from 1976 to 1984.
