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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)

Examines Wisconsin divorce cases (n=3,774) before and after income-sharing guidelines were implemented relating to child support. Found that the negative impact of the mother's income on the size of child support orders has fallen substantially since the guidelines have been effective. Discusses implications. (RB)

Examined three data sets to explore assumptions about custodial fathers: there are few father-only families, most custodial fathers have remarried, many single fathers are widowers, custodial fathers have high incomes, and fathers primarily receive custody of older boys. Concluded that many assumptions are untrue and that child support policies should follow same principles regardless of who has custody. (Author/NB)

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)

Assured child support benefits are an important component of many proposals to reform the child support system. The authors estimate costs and the likely effects of assured benefits on poverty and welfare participation under two scenarios: with and without incorporating the labor supply changes of custodial parents. They find that in each situation assured benefits will reduce poverty rates and the poverty gap; welfare caseloads and expenditures will also fall. When parents are allowed to change the number of hours they work, the impact of assured benefits will be about the same, but the costs of the assured benefit program will increase., 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 [...]

Daniel R. Meyer's study to determine whether child support increases when the income of the fathers of illegitimate children increases, failed to consider that improved child support collection in Wisconsin does not necessarily enhance child support. The above research is an example of the failure of academicians to consider the actual problems, policies and program interventions. Meyer also failed to delve into the necessity of fairness to all people involved and that both parents have the same rights and obligations.

Objective. Children born out of wedlock receive very little child support; one reason given is that their fathers have low incomes. This research has three purposes: 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. This research uses descriptive analysis and multivariate regression on data from Wisconsin court, tax, and AFDC records. Results. 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/year. Further, the incomes of many inrease modestly or dramatically in the next three years, with the youngest fathers showing the largest increases. No relationship is found between changes in fathers' incomes and changes in the amounts of child support awards. Conclusions. The author concludes that the incomes of paternity fathers (especially young fathers) should be monitored regularly and that changes in income should result in changes in child support awards.

In this article, we examine the determinants of child support compliance in nonmarital child support cases in Wisconsin by focusing on the father's ability to pay and the stringency of the child support enforcement system. We find 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. We conclude that to increase child support collections, both the earning power of noncustodial parents and the stringency of the enforcement system should be increased.

The aid provided by Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for old people is not enough for them, and those who are married benefit from the scheme more than those who remain single, as both husbands and wives are eligible for getting the aid. Data regarding the needs of individuals should be collected and suitable changes should be introduced in the scheme so that individual aid is enough for them.

In this article, we report the results of microsimulations using data from the 1986 Current Population Survey--Child Support Supplement (CPS-CSS). The results show that strengthening private child support enforcement and implementing an assured child support benefit would increase the amount of money going to black, Hispanic, and white custodial families. Enforcement alone redistributes income away from the entire minority community (noncustodial parents, custodial parents, and taxpayers), whereas the assured benefit has the opposite effect.

All other industrialized countries have some version of a children's allowance, a grant provided to all families based on the number of children they have. In contrast, the United States provides tax deductions for children, which provide the most benefit to the rich and provide no benefit at all to most poor families. The authors argue 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. A microsimulation model shows the effects of three levels of children's allowances on government revenues, family incomes, welfare use, and labor supply.

A recent study looks at the economic well-being of women and children following an exit from AFDC The goal of many previous national welfare reform efforts has been to help [...]

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]

When a parent has another child with a new partner, a significant effect on parents and children is likely, making factors associated with multiple-partner fertility of interest to policy makers. For single mothers, one potential policy-relevant factor influencing their subsequent fertility with a new partner is child support income. However, the direction and magnitude of any effect is not well-established. This study documents the simple negative relationship between child support and nonmarital fertility with a new partner in our sample of low-income unmarried mothers. We then take advantage of a policy experiment that resulted in randomly assigned differences in child support income to investigate its effects. We find no support for a negative causal relationship between child support receipt and nonmarital fertility with a new partner, instead finding suggestive evidence that mothers with more child support income are slightly more likely to have a subsequent nonmarital birth with a new partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on child support compliance has focused on the characteristics of noncustodial parents (NCPs) that are associated with compliance, finding that compliance with child support orders is primarily related to the ability to pay support as demonstrated by earnings. Yet, there is evidence linking social support networks to both earnings and noncustodial parents' relationships with children. Using a social poverty framework, we show that relatively few NCPs are completely isolated: most have at least some people in their network who can loan money, provide a place to stay, or provide a ride. We explore whether the size of these instrumental support networks is positively linked to child support compliance both directly and indirectly through earnings. We find evidence of a direct association between instrumental support network size and child support compliance, but no evidence of an indirect association via increased earnings. These findings suggest the importance for researchers and child support practitioners to consider the contextual and relational factors of the social networks in which parents are embedded, and to more thoroughly examine the process by which support from one's network can lead to child support compliance. [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]

An introduction is presented to articles in this issue including articles on the impact of income on family structure, on the impact on families of men prisoners and on family complexity as experienced by children.

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]