Piven earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1962. In 2006–2007 she served as the President of the American Sociological Association. She was married to her long-time collaborator Richard Cloward until his death in 2001. Together with Cloward, she wrote an article in the May 1966 issue of The Nation titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty". Her critics have called this the "Cloward—Piven strategy."

Throughout her career, Piven has combined academic work with political action. For instance, in 1983 she co-founded Human SERVE (Service Employees Registration and Voter Education), an organization whose stated goal was increasing voter registration under the linking of social services or Department of Motor Vehicles usage with voter registration offerings. Human SERVE's initiative was taken up by the Clinton administration and made it into the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, colloquially called the "Motor Voter Bill".

• Labor Parties in Postindustrial Societies (Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-19-520927-3)
• The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush's Militarism (New Press, 2004, ISBN 978-1-59558-092-4)
• Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006, ISBN 978-0-7425-6316-2)

With Richard Cloward:

• Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (Pantheon, 1971, 2nd ed: Vintage, 1993, ISBN 978-0-679-74516-7)
• Poor People's Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail (Pantheon, 1977, ISBN 978-0-394-72697-7)
• New Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences (Pantheon, 1982, ISBN 978-0-394-70647-4)
• Why Americans Don't Vote (Pantheon, 1988, ISBN 978-0-394-55396-2)
• The Breaking of the American Social Compact (New Press, 1997, ISBN 978-1-56584-476-6)
• Why Americans Still Don't Vote: And Why Politicians Want it That Way (Beacon, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8070-0449-4)

With Lee Staples and Richard Cloward:

• Roots to Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing (Praeger, 1984, ISBN 978-0-275-91800-2)

With Lorraine Minnite and Margaret Groarke:

• Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters (New Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59558-354-3)

The Frances Fox Piven Papers are held by Smith College .