Robert A. Pollak is the Hernreich Distinguished Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis where he has taught since 1995. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1964. His research interests include the economics of the family and demography. Pollak is the author of more than 70 articles, and three books including From Parent to Child: Intrahousehold Allocations and Intergenerational Relations in the United States, (joint with Jere R. Behrman and Paul Taubman).

In 1999-2000 Pollak held a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and in 2000 he received the Mindel C. Sheps Award for mathematical demography from the Population Association of America. He co-chaired the MacArthur Foundation Network on the Family and the Economy from 1997-2007. Pollak is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Labor Economists, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He will become president of the Society of Labor Economists (SOLE) in May 2009.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in February 2006.