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Most children in the United States will spend at least part of their childhood living apart from one of their parents; the child support system is designed to ensure that they nonetheless receive financial support. While the system is largely effective when noncustodial parents have substantial regular earnings, many noncustodial parents, including a disproportionate share of those whose children live in poverty, have limited earnings and ability to pay child support. The system's response to nonpayment is primarily "sticks," that is, threats and punishments. Nonexperimental evaluations of alternative approaches have shown promise. The National Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED), a large-scale random-assignment evaluation enrolling more than 10,000 noncustodial parents across 18 locations in eight states, was designed to test the effectiveness of an alternative approach--adjusting child support orders, reducing punitive enforcement, and offering employment and parenting services. We find that CSPED, using carrots in place of sticks, substantially increased the satisfaction of noncustodial parents with child support services, lowered the amount of support owed, and increased noncustodial parents' sense of responsibility for their children. However, CSPED had limited to no effects on child support compliance, child support payments, or employment outcomes.

Welfare programs changed dramatically in 1996. Caseloads dropped by more than 9 million recipients over an eight-year period, and millions entered the labor market in the wake of these changes. Since the start of the "welfare revolution," research has emerged to document the new ways former welfare recipients are using federal entitlement programs as they navigate and negotiate the "post-AFDC" era. In this article, the authors examine patterns of participation in TANF, the Food Stamp program, and Medicaid in Wisconsin. Very distinct patterns of participation emerged among the three programs: a single short period of receipt was common for TANF cycling was typical for food stamps, and a long spell was the standard for Medicaid. The authors also explored multiple program participation over a three-year period. Analysis revealed interactions and transitions not normally considered in this line of research. One key finding was the high number of transitions on and off benefits during these three years when the three programs were considered simultaneously. Policy implications are discussed.

Current debates about the success of TANF reforms have been obscured by the use of inconsistent indicators of success, as well as by measurement difficulties associated with alternative indicators. This paper considers conceptual and measurement issues associated with three different indicators of economic well-being: independence from public assistance, having income above the poverty threshold, and freedom from material hardship. Survey and administrative data from a sample of TANF participants illustrate the sensitivity of conclusions to alternative ways of measuring each indicator. Also considered is the extent to which dependence, poverty, and hardship coincide, or capture important differences in outcomes. The principles underlying TANF reforms have implications for appropriate measures of economic well-being, as the empirical importance of these implications demonstrates.

Costs and the likely effects of assured child-support benefits on poverty and welfare participation are estimated under two scenarios: with and without incorporating the labor supply changes of custodial parents. Results indicate reductions in poverty rates, poverty gap, welfare caseloads, and expenditures. Changeable hours will increase costs. (Author/EMK)

Uses data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to trace poverty status and welfare use in five years following an exit from Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Results show substantial diversity in economic well-being. Women who were working when they exited from AFDC do better, and, to a lesser extent so do those who were married or had a partner when they exited. (Author/MKA)

Reviews implementation and effects of three child support reforms in Wisconsin to determine the child support policies that yield the greatest benefit to dependent children. Expressing child support orders as a percentage of noncustodial parent's income increases amount of orders and payments. Withholding payment from noncustodial parents' income increases support payments. (SNR)

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)

Abstract Child support may merely reshuffle poverty, reducing child poverty among families who receive it at the expense of the economic well-being of children living with a nonresident parent. Our study examines child support's effects on child poverty, considering those who pay child support and those who receive child support, and doing so in Colombia and the United States (U.S.). We use data from the Colombian Longitudinal Survey (N = 13,036) and the U.S. Current Population Survey (N = 53,480). Our findings show that the antipoverty effectiveness of child support among resident parent families is larger in Colombia than in the U.S. Child support payments do increase child poverty among children living in payer families in both countries, but the effects are fairly small. In our base models, 6%–9% of children in nonresident parent families are falling into poverty after child support payments are transferred to other families. Overall, child support receipts decrease poverty to a greater extent than child support payments increase it among children. Highlights • We study child poverty and child support in Colombia and the U.S. • Antipoverty effectiveness of child support is higher in Colombia than the U.S. • Child support payments increase poverty somewhat among children in payer families • Results are robust to different methods [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the correlates of nonresident fathers' involvement, particularly the association between involvement and fathers' economic status is important for improving child well-being. However, previous research has produced mixed results. Using data from the longitudinal Survey of Wisconsin Works Families ( N  = 828), and administrative records that improve the accuracy of measuring economic status, this study revisits the relationship between fathers' earnings and father-child contact, while controlling for whether the father has children with multiple partners. Using logistic regressions and lagged dependent variable analysis, we find that low earnings are to some extent a barrier to nonresident fathers' involvement with their nonresidential child. When predicting contact at least once a year we find a consistent and significant association between earnings and contact. In contrast, when predicting frequent contact, earnings were not statistically significant once previous contact was controlled. We conclude that fathers' earnings open the door for contact, as the models predicting contact once a year show. However, the frequency, after the initial contact, is better predicted by other variables. The results underscore the need to complement policy attempts to increase noncustodial father's involvement with policies aimed at improving father's economic status. Moreover, they highlight the importance of interventions that simultaneously work to enhance fathers' economic resources and relationship with the resident mother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most developed countries, children in lone parent families face a high risk of poverty. A partial solution commonly sought in English-speaking nations is to increase the amounts of private child maintenance paid by the other parent. However, where lone parent families are in receipt of social assistance benefits, some countries hold back a portion of the child maintenance to reduce public expenditures. This partial ‘pass-through’ treats child maintenance as a substitute for cash benefits which conceivably neutralises its poverty reduction potential. Such neutralising effects are not well understood and can be obscured further when more subtle interactions between child maintenance systems and social security systems operate. This research makes a unique contribution to knowledge by exposing the hidden interaction effects operating in similar child maintenance systems across four countries: the United Kingdom, United States (Wisconsin), Australia and New Zealand. We found that when child maintenance is counted as income in calculating benefit entitlements, it can reduce the value of cash benefits. Using model lone parent families with ten different employment and income scenarios, we show how the poverty reduction potential of child maintenance is affected by whether it is treated as a substitute for, or a complement to, cash benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the extent to which child support is helping custodial-mother families move out of poverty or move closer to the poverty line in Colombia. Data come from the 2008 Quality of Life Survey, which provides information for 3,359 custodial-mother families. We calculate poverty rates and poverty gaps using both pre-child-support and post-child-support income, for all custodial-mother families and the subgroup of these families receiving child support. Results show that among those poor families who received child support, it brought 32 per cent of them out of poverty, and had even larger effects on extreme poverty. For those who receive it, child support reduces the poverty gap by about one-third. International comparisons suggest that single parents in Colombia are doing much worse than single parents in Scandinavian countries but about the same with respect to those in some Anglo-Saxon countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Welfare programs changed dramatically in 1996. Caseloads dropped by more than 9 million recipients over an eight-year period, and millions entered the labor market in the wake of these changes. Since the start of the "welfare revolution," research has emerged to document the new ways former welfare recipients are using federal entitlement programs as they navigate and negotiate the "post-AFDC" era. In this article, the authors examine patterns of participation in TANF, the Food Stamp program, and Medicaid in Wisconsin. Very distinct patterns of participation emerged among the three programs: a single short period of receipt was common for TANF, cycling was typical for food stamps, and a long spell was the standard for Medicaid. The authors also explored multiple program participation over a three-year period. Analysis revealed interactions and transitions not normally considered in this line of research. One key finding was the high number of transitions on and off benefits during these three years when the three programs were considered simultaneously. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current welfare reforms attempt to move low-income women with children from reliance on welfare to work. The logic of some current efforts relies on the thesis that employment, even in low-paying jobs, leads eventually to self-sufficiency. With data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors analyzed the relationship between work history and economic success during the first five years after women leave welfare. They found that over time median wages and hours worked increased and that earnings generally improved. Nonetheless, even in the fifth year, only one in four consistently worked full-time. Although current welfare reforms are focused on moving women into jobs quickly, results cited in this article suggest that employment itself is not a guarantee of economic success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Incomes of single mothers in the Great Recession are compared to a prior cohort. • Lower income from earnings and child support among the Great Recession cohort. • Surprisingly, total income for the Great Recession cohort is not less. • Safety net expansion was critical to single mothers and their children. • Average total formal income was still below poverty line in both cohorts. The public social safety net in the U.S. for single mothers and their children, including cash assistance and in-kind benefits or vouchers, is largely tied to work—both from individual earnings and from child support intended to supplement public support. How does the safety net perform in periods of severe work instability, such as during the unemployment crisis of the 2008–2010 Great Recession? This paper uses a unique panel dataset from Wisconsin to compare total formal income for a cohort of first-time single mothers in 2002 with a cohort in 2007. Income for both cohorts is constructed for the year after birth—including earnings from the formal labor market, public benefits, and child support—and five years after birth. We hypothesize that total formal income will grow over those five years as mothers accrue experience in the labor market. However, with the labor market crisis of the Great Recession, we expect public benefits to expand as earnings decrease, but not enough to offset the loss of earnings and child support when comparing total formal income differences across the two cohorts, resulting in a lower total income package for mothers in the Great Recession cohort. Using multivariate regression to adjust for demographic covariates, we find that while there is significantly less income from earnings and child support among the Great Recession cohort, the total formal income for the Great Recession cohort is slightly but significantly greater than the control cohort at time two. This suggests that the safety net during the Great Recession provided a buffer relative to lost income, likely as a result of critical policy changes making public benefits more generous and more accessible during the recession. High poverty rates among both cohorts of mothers, however, highlight the importance of the safety net even in stable labor market conditions, and suggests the need for greater benefit expansion. [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]

We examine families with children and the potential impact of changes in family structure on changes in income poverty between 2003 and 2012 in Colombia and Peru. Results show that although the types of families that are increasing-single-mother and cohabiting-couple families-are the ones most at risk economically, overall poverty did not increase. The story in both countries is one of declines in poverty being associated with improvement in economic conditions, with demographic change not having much relationship to the poverty trend. This result is partly explained by the fact that cohabiting-couple families, though they begin the period with relatively high poverty rates, end doing better economically in both countries. As a result, the rise in cohabitation does not seem to be increasing poverty. In contrast, although single-mother families show improvements in human capital and employment in both countries, in Colombia their poverty rates remain high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]