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Sara McLanahan is a professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She is a faculty associate of the Office of Population Research and is the founder and director of the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing. She currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Future of Children, a journal dedicated to providing research and analysis to promote effective policies and programs for children. She is the past president of the Population Association of America, and has served on the National Academy of Sciences-Institute of Medicine Board on Children, Youth, and Families and the boards of the American Sociological Association and the Population Association of America. She currently serves on the Advisory Board for the National Poverty Center, the Board of Trustees for the William T. Grant Foundation, and the selection committee for the William T. Grant Young Scholars Award.

She is the author of many articles and books including Fathers Under Fire: The Revolution in Child Support Enforcement (1998); Social Policies for Children (1996); Growing Up with a Single Parent (1994); Child Support and Child Wellbeing (1994); Child Support Assurance: Design Issues, Expected Impacts, and Political Barriers, as Seen from Wisconsin (1992); and Single Mothers and Their Children: A New American Dilemma (1986).

Dr. McLanahan has received numerous awards and honors including the James S. Coleman Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Sociological Association Family Section, the Pro Humanitate Literary Award for Parenting and Child Development in Nontraditional Families from the North American Resource Center for Child Welfare, the Duncan Distinguished Book Award and the Goode Distinguished book Award for Growing Up With a Single Parent. She is an elected member of the Sociological Research Association and has been a visiting fellow at the Russell Sage Foundation and the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford.

Dr. McLanahan earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979.