Frances Fox Piven

Frances Fox Piven is an American professor of political science and sociology, born in 1932, who has taught at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 1982, having previously taught at Boston University. She is recognized for work spanning social theory and activism, gaining prominence as an advocate for welfare-rights movements and the War on Poverty and helping to formulate their theoretical foundations; her research examines how governments use welfare policy to regulate poor populations and how marginalized groups organize to force social change. With her longtime collaborator Richard Cloward she developed what became known as the Cloward-Piven strategy, which argued for increasing enrollment in social welfare programs in order to strain the welfare system past its capacity and force reforms, including a guaranteed annual income. Her major works include Regulating the Poor (1972, revised 1993) and Poor People's Movements (1977), along with Why Americans Don't Vote (1988) and its sequel Why Americans Still Don't Vote (2000). She served as president of the American Sociological Association for 2006 to 2007.