Sara McLanahan

Career

McLanahan was the William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She previously taught at the University of Wisconsin.

At Princeton, McLanahan was the founding director of the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, a principal investigator of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, director of the Education Research Section, and director of the Joint Degree Program in Social Policy.

McLanahan was editor-in-chief of the journal The Future of Children and a trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation. She served as president of the Population Association of America in 2004, was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2005, and, in 2011, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2016.

McLanahan published more than 125 research articles, 59 book chapters, and 7 books and edited volumes. More than 915 articles have been published which rely on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which she co-founded.

McLanahan died of lung cancer on 31 December 2021 at her residence in Manhattan, New York.

Honors and awards

She was elected as an American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow in 2019.