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In this research note, we demonstrate that trends in the likelihood of child support agreements differ by marital history (i.e., never-married vs. ever-married) and by whether measures rely on the stock of families (i.e., allthose in which children live apart from a parent) or the flow (i.e., those that include children who newly live apart from a parent) in a given year. While previous research has highlighted difference by marital history, the contrast between stock and flow is a new contribution. Trends are typically measured with reference to the stock of cases, even while the flow of cases, which more immediately reflects concurrent policy changes, is more relevant in many contexts. Interpretations of recent declines in child support agreements in the stock of cases--referenced as evidence for both mandating participation and the impracticality of requiring child support-- may be better informed by considering the flow of cases. We find the flow of previously married mothers increasingly likely to have child support agreements while the likelihood is relatively consistent over time for nevermarried mothers. For both groups, using the flow measure, we find notable increases in agreements without payments due in the most recent period. These findings underscore the importance of differentiating stock and flow, and by marital history, in considering the proportion with agreements as an indicator of the effectiveness of current policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND While a striking rise in shared physical custody after divorce has been observed in Wisconsin and some European countries, the same trend in shared custody has not been documented in US national data. OBJECTIVE We provide new evidence on the time trend in shared physical custody after divorce in the United States. METHODS We use eight waves of data from the Current Population Survey -- Child Support Supplement to estimate logit models and conduct a formal decomposition. RESULTS The likelihood of shared physical custody after divorce more than doubled in the United States from before 1985 until 2010--2014, from 13% to 34%. Non-linear probability (logit) models show that non-Hispanic Whites and more advantaged individuals are more likely to report shared physical custody. Both sequential multivariate models and a more formal decomposition show that the increase cannot be explained by changes in the characteristics of those divorcing; rather we find that several characteristics become more strongly associated with shared physical custody over time. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that shared physical custody is increasing in the United States as a whole, and this increase appears to reflect changing norms and policies that favor shared custody. These changing patterns have important implications for children's living arrangements and for the parental investments that children receive after their parents' divorce -- and more broadly for the rise in inequality across families over recent decades. CONTRIBUTION This paper complements previous analyses using court record data from a single US state (Wisconsin) and shows that a large increase in shared physical custody after divorce has occurred in the United States as a whole over the past three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although previous qualitative research in the United States suggests that noncustodial parents have difficult experiences with the child support system, there is no large-scale study of satisfaction. We use data on more than 1,800 socioeconomically disadvantaged noncustodial parents to explore their level of satisfaction and whether it is related to later child support payments. In contrast to qualitative research, we find that nearly half the noncustodial parents are satisfied with child support services. The level of satisfaction is found to be related to several agency actions and agency inflexibility. Non-Hispanic Black noncustodial parents who are satisfied pay more in support than those who were not satisfied; no relationship between satisfaction and payments is detected for other race and ethnicity groups or the sample as a whole. Our findings provide implications for policy makers and practitioners for understanding participant satisfaction and effectively addressing it in policies and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

We document the dramatic decline in the United States of mother sole custody arrangements following divorce. Our empirical analysis uses Wisconsin court records data spanning more than two decades (1988-2010). Updating earlier analyses that showed significant increases in shared custody, we estimate that shared custody (where children spend at least 25% of time with each parent) has now replaced sole-mother custody as the most common post-divorce parenting arrangement-accounting for just over half (50.3%) of all cases in the most recent cohort available. We discuss the institutional context for these changes in custody in the United States, the sociodemographic factors associated with custody outcomes, and the implications for policy and practice. [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]

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]

Despite substantial policy attention to increasing the number of custodial parents with child support orders, the proportion reporting that they are owed child support is falling. Potential explanations for this include increases in shared custody, increases in the number of noncustodial parents who have low incomes ðor incomes lower than the custodial parentÞ, and growing discretion to decide whether to participate in the formal child support system. We use data on about 4,000 divorces in Wisconsin that allow us to evaluate these alternative explanations, differentiating between divorces in an earlier period ð1996-98Þ and a later one ð2004-7Þ. A multivariate analysis and a standard decomposition approach both show that changes in custody, relative incomes, the freedom to choose child support, and other characteristics explain about half of the decline in the likelihood of orders, but about half remains unexplained. Changes in custody are particularly important in explaining the trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Due to the high incidence of poverty among custodial-parent families, most countries have a variety of policies designed to increase these families'' income security, including child support. However, despite policy efforts, in a wide range of countries the majority of custodial-parent families do not receive these transfers. Does this suggest that a low receipt rate is a core issue of child support policy across contexts? To explore this question, this paper focuses on child support receipt in two very different countries, Colombia and the United States. The overarching question is whether the country of residence is associated with the likelihood of child support receipt. The Colombian 2008 Quality of Life Survey and the U.S. 2008 Current Population Survey‐Child Support Supplement provide information on 6751 custodial mothers. Based on a series of probit models, our study shows that living in the U.S. is associated with an increase in the likelihood of child support receipt. However, once we control for custodial mother''s characteristics, the marginal effect of country of residence decreases significantly, and variables such as custodial mother''s education and income quintile become important as well. These findings suggest that in both countries custodial mothers have similar issues when it comes to receiving financial support from their children''s father, despite the differences in economic development and attention to child support policy in Colombia and the U.S. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The underlying theory behind child support guidelines implies that child support orders should change when the incomes of noncustodial parents change. This paper documents changes in noncustodial fathers' earnings over a five‐year period and examines the relationship between the changes in earnings and modifications in child support orders. Using detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin, the authors examine the history of orders and earnings for fathers in couples who had their first child support ordered in 2000. A substantial proportion of fathers experience large changes in earnings, but relatively few of the associated child support orders are modified. Using discrete‐time multinomial event history models that consider time‐varying variables and control for censored observations, we find some evidence of changes in earnings being associated with changes in orders, all else equal, but the relationship is relatively weak and order changes are not proportional to earnings changes. The findings highlight the challenges and importance of developing policies that result in child support orders being more responsive to changes in fathers' incomes. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that program participants have limited knowledge of the rules governing social programs. These knowledge gaps limit program effectiveness. This article uses a unique survey of Wisconsin welfare participants to explore factors associated with whether single mothers have accurate knowledge of child support rules. It also assesses the accuracy of knowledge gained from their own experience, formal sources, and informal sources. Multivariate analyses document the difficulty participants have in understanding new rules. They also highlight the roles that formal sources and clients' own experience play in obtaining accurate program information. Results suggest the possibility that informal sources provide inaccurate information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study on allternative measures of economic success among Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) participants. Survey and administrative data which was taken 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.

This article documents patterns and correlates of child support compliance among fathers of welfare recipients in Wisconsin. We introduce the concept of discretionary obligors (because payment results in part from voluntary cooperation) and nondiscretionary obligors (because payment results from routine enforcement mechanisms) to differentiate between fathers with weak versus strong connections to formal employment, and we demonstrate that different factors underlie the compliance patterns of these groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the income of fathers of children born out of wedlock and whether the increases in the fathers' income translate into changes in child support awards. Importance of regularly monitoring changes in fathers' income and changes in the amount of child support awards; Use of descriptive analysis and multivariate regression on data from Wisconsin court and tax records. Children born out of wedlock receive very little child support; one reason given is that their fathers have low incomes. This research is aimed to examine the incomes of these fathers at the time paternity is established; to explore whether these incomes increase over time; and to examine whether the increases in income translate into changes in child support awards. Methods. It uses descriptive analysis and multivariate regression on data from Wisconsin court, tax. Although many fathers of children born out of wedlock have zero or very low incomes at the time the paternity case comes to court in Wisconsin, half of the fathers age 25 and older who have incomes in the court records have incomes over $10,000 per year.

Changes in the living arrangements of children have implications for social policy and children's well-being. Understanding who gets custody on divorce--mother, father, or both sharing custody--can also inform our understanding of family organization and the merits of alternative theories of marriage and divorce. We examine physical-custody outcomes among recent Wisconsin divorces in an effort to understand the factors associated with shared custody as well as mother-sole custody and father-sole custody. Although mother-sole custody remains the dominant arrangement, shared custody has increased over a nine-year period. We find that the probability of shared custody increases with parent's income. Prior marital history, parents' ages, the age and gender of children, and the legal process also have an impact on the probability of shared custody. In contrast to shared custody, the probability of father-sole custody decreases with parent's income, while the relationship with other significant factors is generally similar. The notable exception is that, unlike shared custody, we find no evidence for an increase over time in the probability of father-sole custody. We also find that when the father has a higher proportion of the couple's total income, both shared custody and father-sole custody are more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the rapid growth rates among father-only families in the U.S. The growth in the number of single-parent families in the U.S. during the second half of this century has been well documented. Recent research has revealed increases in both father-only and mother-only families, although the number of father-only families is still fairly small. After decreasing during the 1960s and early 1970s, the percentage of single-parent families headed by fathers began to increase in 1974. By 1989 father-only families constituted more than 15 per cent of all single-parent families, roughly the same level as in the early 1960s. The unit of analysis for this study is a family with children under age 18. The data come from the Public Use Microdata Samples drawn from the 1960 through 1990 United States decennial censuses. These samples are large enough to enable researchers to focus on groups that arc not very prevalent. Goal of this article is to categorize each family with children as a mother-only family, a father-only family, a husband-wife family, or a cohabiting family.

The article argues that children's allowance could be instituted in the United States that would decrease poverty and welfare participation while not costing the government any additional expenses. A children's allowance is a universal grant provided to all families, regardless of income, on the basis of the number of children they have. Basically the programs operate the same worldwide. Children's allowance's are usually in the range of 5% to 10% of a country's average gross production wage. Benefits are awarded through monthly checks, weekly checks, or annual tax credits. Eligibility is usually tended to all children through compulsory school age, although in some countries, such as Great Britain, benefits begin with the second child. The policy changes proposed in this article must be carefully delineated because children's allowances with different features would have widely different effects. The proposal is to completely eliminate the income tax deduction for children, and replace it with a universal children's allowance for each unmarried child who is currently eligible to receive the tax deduction.

The article examines the determinants of child support compliance in nonmarital child support cases in Wisconsin, U.S. by focusing on the father's ability to pay and the stringency of the child support enforcement system. It is found that tougher enforcement rules positively affect compliance rates. Higher incomes are associated with higher compliance rates, and lower incomes, with lower rates. The percentage of income that is owed in child support also has an effect on compliance. Orders that represent a high percentage of income relative to existing guidelines are associated with lower compliance rates. However, owing a low percentage of income only has an effect on compliance for fathers with very low incomes; for these fathers, obligating them to pay low amounts of support positively affects compliance. These results suggest that a father's ability to pay, in addition to his willingness to pay, determines the extent to which he fulfills his child support obligation. The article concludes with the fact that, to increase child support collections, both the earning power of noncustodial parents and the stringency of the enforcement system should be increased.

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.

Examines the adequacy of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for elderly individuals and couples. Reference points to measure adequacy; Poverty threshold; Half of median income; Basic needs costs and aid to families with dependent children; Statistics on SSI benefits for aged individuals and couples; Policy options to improve the incomes of recipients.

The article evaluates child support orders, in an attempt to make Wisconsin's child support cases more adequate and up-to-date. This article is divided into four sections. The first provides an overview of the Wisconsin child support system, the need for review, and the policy context of the revision project. The second describes the data and method of collection used by participating county staff. The third provides the results of the project in closing, it explores the policy and program implications of the revision project and make recommendations. One of the factors driving the current welfare reform debate is the idea that taxpayers are being asked to support children in poor single-parent families because parents who do not live with their children are not providing them with adequate financial support. The child support and welfare systems are again receiving attention as policymakers search for ways to shift responsibility for the economic support of single-parent families from the government to the non-custodial parent.

The article provides information on the level of implementation, and the effect of three child support reforms in Wisconsin, which were reviewed by the Institute for Research on Poverty. Concern about the well-being of single-parent families, particularly those headed by women, has intensified in the last two decades. Two of the chief factors fueling this concern are the growth in mother-only families and the increase in the child poverty rate. The rising numbers and deteriorating circumstances of children in single-parent families have contributed to researchers' and policymakers' growing interest in the child support system. Exposure of these problems led to significant reforms in the child support system at both the state and national levels. Child support reform in Wisconsin was based on the Child Support Assurance. This system reflects the philosophy that all parents-those who live with their children and those who live apart from them-are obligated to share their income with their children.

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]

Abstract: Research suggests that paternal re-partnering and new-partner fertility are associated with decreased nonresident father investments in children. Few studies, however, have examined the influence of maternal re-partnering and new-partner births on nonresident father investments. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine associations of maternal re-partnering (through cohabitation or marriage with a new partner) and new-partner births with nonresident father visitation and child support payments. Results suggest that maternal re-partnering is associated with a decrease in both yearly father–child contact and child support received by the mother. New-partner fertility for mothers who are co-residing with a partner is associated with an additional decrease in monthly father–child contact, but does not have an additional influence on yearly father–child contact or child support receipt. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]