Stephen Klineberg grew up in Westchester County, near New York City. He received a B.A. from Haverford College, an M.A. in Psychopathology from the University of Paris, and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard. In 1972, after teaching at Princeton (1966-1972), he joined Rice University’s Sociology Department. The recipient of twelve major teaching awards during his years at Rice, he was also the founding-director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

In 1982, he and his students initiated the annual Houston Area Survey, now in its 44th year of tracking systematically the shifts in economic outlooks, demographic patterns, experiences, attitudes, and beliefs among successive representative samples of Houston residents, during more than four decades of remarkable change.

No other metropolitan region in the country has been the focus of a long-term longitudinal study
of this scope. Few cities more clearly exemplify the ongoing economic and demographic
transformations that are profoundly refashioning the social and political landscape across
America. Klineberg’s most recent book, entitled Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing America (Simon & Schuster, 2020), explores the national implications of the first 42
years of survey findings.

After 60 years of marriage, his wife, Peggy, passed away in November 2022. Both of their two children and all five of their grandchildren live in the Washington DC area. In April 2023, Steve officially retired from Rice, said a fond farewell to Houston, and moved into a retirement community in Alexandria VA, to be closer to his family and to begin a new chapter in his life.