Marybeth Shinn is Professor of Psychology and Public Policy in the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.

Her work focuses on poverty, homelessness, and the community, institutional, and policy environments that affect individual well-being. She and her colleagues have conducted numerous studies of homelessness in New York City. These include a five-year study of homeless and housed poor families, a study of alternative models for sheltering homeless families, and an evaluation of the Department of Homeless Services' count of people living on the streets. She has also worked on experimental evaluations of a program in New York to house homeless individuals with mental illness and chemical dependencies in their own apartments, directly from the street, and a program in Westchester County to get families out of shelter into housing, with structured, time-limited services. Other current research interests include welfare reform, prevention of homelessness, and methods for assessing the social contexts of people's lives.