Vonnie McLoyd

Vonnie Cile McLoyd is an American developmental psychologist known for her research on how poverty, parental job loss, unemployment, and work characteristics affect children's social emotional development. She is the Ewart A. C. Thomas Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan.

McLoyd was a 1996 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, in recognition of her work on the "interactive influences of race, ethnicity, family, and economic hardship on human development." In 2024 she was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Life
McLoyd completed her undergraduate degree at Talladega College (1971) and her M.A. (1973) and Ph.D. (1975) at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation titled The Effects of Verbal Reinforcement and Induced Perceptions of Causality on Intrinsic Motivation was supervised by Joseph Veroff.

McLoyd joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1978. From 2002–2010, she was faculty at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill before returning to University of Michigan.

She was associate editor of the journals Child Development (1993-1996) and American Psychologist (2006-2016).