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.^[1]

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."^[2]

McLoyd completed her undergraduate degree at Talladega College (1971)^[3] and her M.A. (1973) and Ph.D. (1975) at the University of Michigan.^[4] Her dissertation titled The Effects of Verbal Reinforcement and Induced Perceptions of Causality on Intrinsic Motivation was supervised by Joseph Veroff.^[5]

McLoyd joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1978.^[6] From 2002–2010, she was faculty at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill before returning to University of Michigan.^[1]

She was associate editor of the journals Child Development^[7](1993-1996) and American Psychologist (2006-2016).^[1]

• Vonnie C. McLoyd; Nancy E. Hill; Kenneth A. Dodge (January 2005). African American Family Life: Ecological and Cultural Diversity. Guilford Press. pp. 3–. ISBN 978-1-57230-995-1.
• Vonnie C. McLoyd; Laurence Steinberg (1 July 1998). Studying Minority Adolescents: Conceptual, Methodological, and Theoretical Issues. Psychology Press. pp. 251–. ISBN 978-1-135-69253-7.
• McLoyd, Vonnie C.; Jayaratne, Toby Epstein; Ceballo, Rosario; Borquez, Julio (1994). "Unemployment and Work Interruption among African American Single Mothers: Effects on Parenting and Adolescent Socioemotional Functioning". Child Development. 65 (2): 562–589. doi:10.2307/1131402. JSTOR 1131402.
• McLoyd, Vonnie C. (April 1990). "The Impact of Economic Hardship on Black Families and Children: Psychological Distress, Parenting, and Socioemotional Development". Child Development. 61 (2): 311–346. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1990.tb02781.x. PMID 2188806.