Richard Andrew Cloward (December 25, 1926 – August 20, 2001) was an American sociologist and activist.

He influenced the Strain theory of criminal behavior and the concept of anomie, and was a primary motivator for the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly known as the "Motor Voter Act".

Cloward was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Esther Marie (Fleming), an artist and women's rights activist, and Donald Cloward, a radical Baptist minister.

In 1982, he and his wife Frances Fox Piven founded "Human SERVE" (Service Employees Registration and Voter Education), which established motor-voter programs in selected states as precedents for the Motor Voter Act enacted in 1993.

Also in 1966, he and Piven published a paper in the May issue of The Nation magazine — "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty",[6] which advocated wiping out poverty by launching "[w]idespread campaigns to register the eligible poor for welfare aid, and to help existing recipients obtain their full benefits, [to] produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments", which they believed would lead to the implementation of a guaranteed minimum income.