Search

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.

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]

• 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]

• 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]

An introduction to a set of articles that surveys work commissioned by the Institute for Research on Poverty of the University of Wisconsin-Maddison as part of a major three-year research project on family complexity, poverty, and public policy is presented.

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]

• 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]

We consider the intersection between two striking U.S. trends: dramatic increases in the imprisonment of fathers and increases in the proportion of mothers who have children with more than one partner (multiple-partner fertility, or MPF). Using matched longitudinal administrative data that provide unusually comprehensive and accurate information about the occurrence and timing of imprisonment, fertility, and MPF for the population of the state of Wisconsin, we consider the relationship between paternal imprisonment and MPF among unwed mothers. Employing discrete-time event history analysis with multinomial logistic regression, we model the occurrence and timing of the mother's second birth, distinguishing between a birth with the same father and a birth with a different father, and distinguishing between current imprisonment and a history of imprisonment. We find that current imprisonment is associated with an increased likelihood of MPF and a decreased likelihood of fertility with the same father (compared with no additional birth) and that a history of imprisonment is associated with increased MPF in some models but not in our preferred model. To control for unobserved heterogeneity among mothers and assess the evidence of a causal effect of fathers' imprisonment, we also employ the case-time-control method, a fixed-effects method for the analysis of nonrepeated events. Results suggest that fathers' current imprisonment may increase mothers' MPF. Policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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., all those 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 never-married 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., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors.)

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., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Second-generation or lignocellulosic biofuels are a tangible source of renewable energy, which is critical to combat climate change by reducing the carbon footprint. Filamentous fungi secrete cellulose-degrading enzymes called cellulases, which are used for production of lignocellulosic biofuels. However, inefficient production of cellulases is a major obstacle for industrial-scale production of second-generation biofuels. We used computational simulations to design and implement synthetic positive feedback loops to increase gene expression of a key transcription factor, CLR-2, that activates a large number of cellulases in a filamentous fungus, Neurospora crassa. Overexpression of CLR-2 reveals previously unappreciated roles of CLR-2 in lignocellulosic gene network, which enabled simultaneous induction of approximately 50% of 78 lignocellulosic degradation-related genes in our engineered Neurospora strains. This engineering results in dramatically increased cellulase activity due to cooperative orchestration of multiple enzymes involved in the cellulose degradation pathway. Our work provides a proof of principle in utilizing mathematical modeling and synthetic biology to improve the efficiency of cellulase synthesis for second-generation biofuel production.