Search

We document the incidence and evolution of family complexity from the perspective of children. Following a cohort of firstborn children whose mothers were not married at the time of their birth, we consider family structure changes over the first 10 years of the child's life-considering both full and half-siblings who are coresidential or who live in another household. We rely on detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin that include information on the timing of subsequent births to the mother and father, and detailed information on earnings, child support, and welfare. We find that 60% of firstborn children of unmarried mothers have at least one half-sibling by age 10. Our results highlight the importance of having fertility information for both fathers and mothers: estimates of the proportion of children with half-siblings would be qualitatively lower if we had fertility information on only one parent. Complex family structures are more likely for children of parents who are younger or who have low earnings and for those in larger urban areas. Children who have half-siblings on their mother's side are also more likely to have half-siblings on their father's side, and vice versa, contributing to very complex family structures-and potential child support arrangements-for some children.

In most states, child support paid on behalf of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants is used to offset TANF and child support administrative expenditures; this policy primarily benefits taxpayers. In contrast, Wisconsin allowed most custodial parents to keep all support paid on their behalf. This policy, which treats welfare and child support as complements, was evaluated through an experimental design. This paper reports the key results of the experimental evaluation, using state administrative data to examine the effects on child support outcomes and governmental cost. We find that when custodial mothers keep all child support paid on their behalf, paternity establishment occurs more quickly, noncustodial fathers are more likely to pay support, and custodial families receive more support. These outcomes are achieved at no significant governmental cost. (Contains 5 tables and 32 footnotes.)

Examines compliance with child support orders by divorced fathers in Wisconsin during 1981-89. The fathers' ability to pay is strongly related to compliance: compliance increases as the fathers' income increases. Analysis of nonpaying fathers suggests that although they are not a high-income group, they are generally not so poor that they could not afford to pay at least some support. (KW)

Argues that a children's allowance could be instituted in this country that would decrease poverty and welfare participation while not costing the federal government any additional resources. Discusses microsimulation model that shows effects of three levels of children's allowances on government revenues, family incomes, welfare use, and labor supply. (Author/NB)

Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA instituted child support agencies in the late 1900s and had some policies that resulted in having lowered governmental expenditures when child support was paid. Building on previous research comparing these four countries, this article examines the extent to which these countries currently use explicit cost recovery policies, implicit policies revealed in programme interactions, and fees. Using data from country informants on hypothetical families, we show the percentage of child support payments that are retained through these different tools. In addition to characterizing country approaches, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of different cost-recovery strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonmarital children account for two fifths of births in the US, and close to two thirds of these children do not live with their fathers by age five. Although nonmarital children primarily live with their mothers, joint legal custody has emerged as an option for their parents. Parents with joint legal custody are expected to make major decisions for their child together, regardless of their prior marital status. This study investigates whether joint legal custody increases child support payments in the first year of a child support order among fathers of nonmarital children who live with their mothers, using a unique sample of court records in 2000–2009 in Wisconsin. It finds consistent and statistically significant positive associations across different methods; joint legal custody is associated with higher child support payments by about $170 a year and a higher compliance ratio by 5 percentage points. Paying child support is only one way nonresident parents can contribute to their children. Therefore, more studies are needed to understand whether and how joint legal custody affects other aspects of parenting and conditions under which it should be encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The amount of accumulated unpaid child support (arrears) owed throughout the United States is a significant social problem affecting those who owe support (who may face punitive actions) as well as custodial parents, children, and state governments (who may not receive payments they are due). As such, Wisconsin reduced the amount of interest due on child support arrears from 1% per month to 0.5% per month. • We leverage Wisconsin child support administrative records to conduct both descriptive and multiple regression analyses to explore arrears and payment patterns before and after the change. • Findings suggest the policy not only slowed the rate of arrears growth but also increased payments toward arrears. • Our analyses cannot prove causality, but they do provide some of the first evidence of what happens after the interest rate changes, and they suggest that reducing the interest rate could have beneficial effects on parents and children. The amount of accumulated unpaid child support (arrears) owed throughout the United States is over $100 billion. High arrears balances mean that those who owe support may face punitive enforcement actions, those due child support did not receive the money they were owed, and the child support program must devote more attention to enforcing payment of past-due amounts at the expense of enforcing current amounts due, diverting the program's efforts and raising the cost of enforcement. To address the problems associated with high arrears, Wisconsin reduced the amount of interest due on child support arrears from 1% per month to 0.5% per month. We leverage Wisconsin child support administrative records to conduct both descriptive and multiple regression analyses to explore arrears and payment patterns before and after the change. Findings suggest the policy not only slowed the rate of arrears growth but also increased payment amounts. Those who did not owe arrears at the beginning of the period made higher payments when they did get behind than those who owed higher arrears. Our analyses cannot prove causality, but they do provide some of the first evidence of what happens after the interest rate changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When parents have children from multiple partners, the resulting complex families challenge conventions concerning parents' rights and responsibilities. These challenges are particularly salient for child support policies, which articulate parents' obligations to their children and determine the amount of support due. Data from Wisconsin suggest that complex families are fairly common and that nonresident fathers' earnings in these families are typically quite low. The prevalence of these families and their economic vulnerability make expectations about child support particularly important, but family complexity creates tension among key principles underlying the child support system. This study simulates several potential policy regimes, estimating support for hypothetical cases and the actual child support caseload. The findings suggest that different regimes can result in vastly different amounts due and no system is ideal. The most feasible approach maybe to set support for each child at a given percentage of a nonresident parent's income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The declining availability of public assistance and increasing reliance on child support as a key income source for single-parent families raise questions about the adequacy and consistency of support. Using detailed Wisconsin administrative records for custodial mothers who obtained a new child support order in 2000, this study examines the regularity of child support receipt and its contribution to the regularity of total income among custodial-mother families over a 5-year period. Findings suggest variation in levels of regularity; among mothers who receive support in a given year, slightly less than half consistently receive a regular amount. The characteristics of those with any receipt of child support are found to differ on some measures from those of mothers with regular receipt.The findings also show that child support generally increases the regularity of the mothers family income, especially that for mothers in low-income families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates whether mothers receiving public assistance in the U.S. should be allowed to keep any child support paid on behalf of their children rather than having that support substituting government costs. It has been found that in most U.S. states Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and child support administrative are offset by child support paid on behalf on TANF participants. Also, paternity establishment occurs more quickly when custodial mothers keep all child support paid on their behalf.

This article examines the relationships among child support orders, child support payments, and the compliance rate (payments compared to orders). It uses administrative data from Wisconsin, examining 3 years of orders and payments by fathers who had their first order for child support to a particular mother in 2000. Using fixed-effects models that attempt to control for unobserved factors, the authors find that the burden of orders (i.e., the proportion of earnings owed for child support) is positively associated with the size of payments but negatively associated with compliance. An alternative method yields the same conclusions. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little research on knowledge of the policy rules that could affect individuals, either in general or in evaluations of new programs. The lack of research is surprising, given that knowledge gaps could limit the effectiveness of reforms or lead to incorrect inferences regarding the effects of a policy change. In this article, we use survey data to examine the level and sources of welfare participants' policy knowledge in the context of a substantial change in child support and welfare policy in Wisconsin. We find very low levels of knowledge of child support policy rules. Multivariate analyses suggest that people tend to learn policy rules by experience; we find less consistent support for knowledge being primarily imparted through interactions with caseworkers. A difference-in-difference analysis suggests that if participants had been more knowledgeable, program impacts would have been larger. Implications of this research for policy implementation and policy evaluations are discussed. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family complexity that results when adults have children with multiple partners (multiple partner fertility) is quite common. It also has important implications for understanding child support outcomes and for designing and evaluating welfare and family policy. Using a unique set of merged administrative data, this article provides the first comprehensive documentation of levels of family complexity among a broad sample of welfare recipients. The analyses suggest that family complexity is very common and also that complexity is associated with systematically different child support outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates how the incorporation of a labor supply response would change the estimates of costs and firs-round effects on poverty and welfare participation under an assured child support benefit. The watershed Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRA) delegates responsibility from the federal government to the states to design and administer programs for poor children and their families. Assured benefit proposals have attracted the interest of policy makers at both the state and federal levels. The only assured benefits actually tested in this country have been limited versions available only to former Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients and only in certain states, with the most extensive demonstration conducted in New York. In the absence of labor supply changes, an assured child support benefit will increase the incomes of custodial-parent families, which will decrease the number in poverty and shrink the poverty gap. An assured benefit could also decrease AFDC if the amount of the assured benefit fully offsets AFDC and is larger than the amount of AFDC benefit currently received. An assured benefit might change the number of hours that custodial-parent families work, however, and this could affect estimates of poverty reduction, welfare use, and costs.

The quality of American child support systems is vitally important to the nation's future. Nearly one of every four children is now living apart from at least one parent and therefore is potentially eligible for child support. This article reports the results of microsimulations using data from the 1988 Current Population Survey-Child Support Supplement. Among unmarried mothers, about one in five had a child support award. Of all custodial parents with child support awards, only half received the full amount due from their absent partners, and almost a quarter received nothing. Second, the child support system has been rife with inequity: it has treated equals unequally and has been regressive. Whether noncustodial parents have been ordered to pay support, how much they have been ordered to pay, and how much effort has been devoted to forcing them to pay has depended not just on their ability to pay but also on the varying attitudes of judges, district attorneys, and welfare officials, as well as the skills of both parents' lawyers.

This article examines compliance patterns of child support cases taking place in Wisconsin from 1986 through 1988. The researchers find that sixty-five percent of child support is paid during each of the first five years following divorce, dispelling the notion that child support payments decline over time. The researchers also find a large polarization between full-payers and complete non-payers, as those who tend to comply during the first year tend to indicate a long-term compliance. An examination of divorced and unmarried fathers is also given.

The article studies the effects of child support numerical guidelines implemented in the U.S., for the amount of child support orders in Wisconsin. The national policymakers in the U.S. have made efforts to increase child support, which includes a shift to numerical guidelines for the amount of child support orders. These guidelines generally reflect an income-sharing philosophy, in which support is expected of all nonresident parents, regardless of resident-parent resources. The federal Child Support Enforcement Amendments to the Social Security Act of 1984 required all states to develop a numerical formula that could be used to determine the amount of child support ordered by the court. In 1987 Wisconsin adopted a policy that made the guideline presumptive rather than advisory. Wisconsin has made substantial progress toward a system of child support based on income sharing. The authors find that the negative impact of the mother's income on the size of child support orders has fallen substantially.

This paper provides estimates of the effect of child support on exiting and reentering welfare for a sample of divorced women in Wisconsin. Modest amounts of child support do not have large effects on exiting welfare in this sample. The percentage of women who return to welfare is higher than has been reported previously. Receiving child support significantly decreases the likelihood of returning to welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The economic impact of a child support assurance system (CSAS) is simulated with microdata on custodial families in Wisconsin. The CSAS includes a uniform child support standard, automatic wage withholding, a minimum child support benefit, and wage subsidy for eligible families. The simulation incorporates a model of the labor supply decision representing the custodial parent's choice of whether to participate in CSAS or in the current AFDC system. The results suggest that CSAS can significantly reduce poverty as well as welfare caseloads. If child support collections increase by one-half of the difference between estimated ability to pay child support and current collections, CSAS will be less costly than the current system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Actions to enforce child support payments are described among a sample of fathers. • Most fathers who stop paying child support receive at least one enforcement action. • Actions beyond letters are used rarely and seldom as a first step. • Most enforcement actions are associated with beginning to pay support. • Suspending licenses is sometimes related to a lower likelihood of payment. Many noncustodial parents do not pay the support they owe. The child support enforcement program has a number of tools to facilitate child support collections in response to nonpayment, such as suspending licenses and holding court hearings. Despite policy interest in raising levels of compliance with child support orders, little recent research exists on the use of enforcement actions or their effectiveness. In this analysis, we provide descriptive statistics on the use of enforcement actions and whether there is a relationship between these actions and beginning to pay. We use state administrative data for a sample of noncustodial fathers in the state of Wisconsin. We find that most nonpaying fathers receive at least one enforcement action during their first nonpayment spell, where the most common action is a letter. Actions beyond letters are relatively infrequent, and almost never used as a first step. Most enforcement actions are associated with beginning to pay support, though suspending licenses is sometimes related to a lower likelihood of beginning to pay. Our analysis is not causal, and so does not provide strong evidence about whether (and when) various enforcement tools should be used. However, it provides new evidence on an understudied question, and a basis for future research on the effectiveness of alternative approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased frequency of divorce, separation, and nonmarital childbearing over the past several decades has contributed to the rise of parents not living with their children in the same household. These nonresident parents are typically fathers, many of whom are obligated to share the economic responsibility for their children across households by paying child support. This study uses Luxemburg Income Study (LIS) datasets from the year 2013 to study the characteristics of fathers paying support and the relationship between child support and poverty among fathers (and mothers) in Finland, the UK, and the U.S. Results show that characteristics of fathers paying support were generally similar across countries. The amounts paid were lowest in Finland and highest in the U.S., as expected. For the poverty effects, few child support payers fall into poverty because of the amount of child support they pay in any country, but the increase in poverty rates due to paying support is clearly higher in the U.S. than Finland or the UK. More single mothers are drawn out of poverty by the receipt of child support in Finland than in the other countries, partly because the government guarantees child support. Finally, child support is an anti-poverty policy in all countries: the decrease in poverty among single-mother families from receiving support is larger than the increase in poverty among fathers paying support. • In the U.S., the amount of child support paid is higher than in Finland or the UK. • In all countries unpartnered fathers are the largest group of child support payers. • Paying support increases poverty more in the U.S. than in the other countries. • Child support lowers poverty more among mothers than it raises it among fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on Wolfgang P. Hirczy de Mino's views on child support. Policymakers and program administrators may not know how vigorously to pur- sue child support in nonmarital cases because little is known about the fathers' incomes. De Mino correctly asserts that child support policy must deal with competing objectives and thus income is not the only factor to consider when deciding whether orders should be adjusted. Income changes are surely a key consideration, however, if not the most important consideration and thus the interrelationship between income change and order change is an important policy question.

• Child support orders are less likely in shared care in both Finland and Wisconsin. • Expense sharing is more prevalent in shared care than sole care. • In Finland, child support receipt reduces the likelihood of expense sharing. • Equal shared care exhibits the highest frequency of expense sharing. This study analyzes the associations between post-separation child living arrangements and child support outcomes and expense sharing in two contrasting welfare states: Finland and the United States (Wisconsin). The extent to which parents share the economic responsibility of the child after separation varies across countries. As shared care arrangements become more prevalent, traditional child support arrangements may become less common. Survey data collected in Finland (2019) and Wisconsin (2020) from separated or divorced parents are utilized in this study, and standard logistic and OLS regression models are used to investigate the relationship between sole and shared care arrangements and child support outcomes and expense sharing. The findings demonstrate that shared care arrangements are associated with a reduced likelihood of having a formal child support order and an increased likelihood of sharing child-related expenses in Finland and Wisconsin. Thus, shared care arrangements are linked to a decrease in formal child support orders and an increase in expense sharing. The results indicate a reduced reliance on formal child support orders and an increased willingness to privately share child-related expenses; findings reflect changing societal practices regarding the economic aspects of child rearing in separated or divorced families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]