Sara McLanahan

McLanahan is one of the nation's leading researchers in the field of child and family well-being. She has applied the best scientific evidence to the question of children's well-being in various types of families. She wrote a highly influential book on children in single parent families, Growing Up With a Single Parent, in 1995. Her presidential address to the Population Association of America in 2003, published in the journal Demography in 2004 under the title, "Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring Under the Second Demographic Transition," showed the divergent trends in children's well-being according to social class.