The impact of child support enforcement policy on nonmarital childbearing

The interaction of welfare and child support regulations has created a situation in which child support policy's incentives that discourage unwed fatherhood tend to be stronger than its incentives that encourage unwed motherhood. This suggests that more stringent child support enforcement creates incentives that reduce the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing, particularly among women with a significant chance of needing public assistance in the event of a nonmarital birth and their male partners. We investigate this hypothesis with a sample of women from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to which we add information on state child support enforcement. We examine childbearing behavior between the ages of 15 and 44 before marriage and during periods of non‐marriage following divorce or widowhood. The estimates indicate that women living in states with more effective child support enforcement are less likely to bear children when unmarried, especially if they are young, never‐married, or black. The findings suggest that improved child support enforcement may be a potent intervention for reducing nonmarital childbearing. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Child Support and the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid Expansions

A quickly developing literature has shown that the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid expansions have improved health insurance coverage, health, and financial well‐being among low‐income adults without dependent children. This population includes noncustodial parents. With substantial overlap in the population that is typically obligated to pay child support and the population that has strongly benefited from the expansions, there may be potential implications for child support enforcement. In this paper, I examine the effect of public health insurance eligibility to low‐income adults on child support outcomes. I find that the ACA Medicaid expansions increased child support distributed to custodial families as arrears by 8.5 percent. Evidence also suggests current support distributions increased by about 2 percent. There were no significant effects on paying toward a child support order. Among unmarried mothers, the likelihood of child support receipt increased by 8 percent. These results imply that access to public health insurance can increase the ability of noncustodial parents to pay child support.     

Are Parental Welfare Work Requirements Good for Disadvantaged Children? Evidence From Age‐of‐Youngest‐Child Exemptions

This paper assesses the impact of welfare reform's parental work requirements on low‐income children's cognitive and social‐emotional development. The identification strategy exploits an important feature of the work requirement rules—namely, age‐of‐youngest‐child exemptions—as a source of quasi‐experimental variation in first‐year maternal employment. The 1996 welfare reform law empowered states to exempt adult recipients from the work requirements until the youngest child reaches a certain age. This led to substantial variation in the amount of time that mothers can remain home with a newborn child. I use this variation to estimate the impact of work‐requirement‐induced increases in maternal employment. Using a sample of infants from the Birth cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the reduced form and instrumental variables estimates reveal sizable negative effects of maternal employment. An auxiliary analysis of mechanisms finds that working mothers experience an increase in depressive symptoms, and are less likely to breastfeed and read to their children. In addition, such children are exposed to nonparental child care arrangements at a younger age, and they spend more time in these settings throughout the first year of life.     

Moving Up,Moving Out,or Going Nowhere? A Study of the Employment Patterns of Young Women and the Implications for Welfare Mothers

Conventional wisdom holds that women on welfare will be better off in the long run if they take a job, even if it means initially having less money to spend on their and their children's needs. Underlying this thinking is the belief that women who take low‐paying jobs will eventually move up to higher paying jobs either with their current employer or by changing employers. This paper examines the employment transitions of young women focusing on the likelihood that women who turn to the welfare system for support will make the transition from low‐paying to high‐paying jobs. The data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Based on the experiences of women who never received welfare, an estimated one‐quarter of young women who received welfare could be firmly established in jobs paying more than $9.50 an hour by ages 26 and 27. An additional 40 percent would work steadily but in low‐paying jobs, and more than one‐third would work only sporadically. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Welfare and child support: Complements,not substitutes

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. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Federal Cost Recovery in Child Support Enforcement: Incentives for Improving Long-Term Effectiveness

Over the last 15 years, the benefits of operating an efficient child support enforcement program has received greater attention. This article examines the general environment in which child support enforcement programs operate and describes the Virginia experience over the last three years, which has seen AFDC collections increase by over 45 percent and all collections increase by more than 60 percent.     

Tightened Immigration Policies and the Self‐Employment Dynamics of Mexican Immigrants

As the U.S. government has intensified its crackdown on illegal immigration in recent years, an important question to ask is how undocumented immigrants react to the stricter enforcement of immigration laws. This paper seeks to answer whether they increasingly choose self‐employment in an effort to avoid apprehension and subsequent deportation. To guard against endogeneity bias that might stem from increased enforcement in reaction to illegal immigration, the empirical analysis makes use of the September 11 terror attacks (9/11), which inadvertently triggered stricter immigration enforcement nationwide, as a natural experiment. Using a difference‐in‐differences approach and data from the Current Population Survey between 1996 and 2006, this paper examines the changes in the self‐employment choices of male and non‐citizen Mexican immigrants (a proxy for undocumented immigrants) compared to less‐educated Whites (the control group). The findings indicate that male and non‐citizen Mexican immigrants are substantially more likely (40 percent) to enter into self‐employment than less‐educated Whites after 9/11. The analysis further suggests that this finding is not driven by the 2001 recession that coincided with the terror attacks. The increased entries are mainly observed in the group that is most likely to be in the United States illegally and in those who face strong economic incentives. In addition, increased entries are not driven by increased unemployment among Mexican immigrants after the 9/11 event, but, rather, they reflect a change in the behavior of the unemployed Mexican immigrants, perhaps due to changes in perceived risks of detection and deportation.     

Deadbeats and turnips in child support reform

Child support reforms have focused almost exclusively on punitive measures, driven by the stereotypical image of a “deadbeat dad” who can afford to pay child support but refuses to do so. This image fits some noncustodial fathers, but ignores the diverse nature of this population. We show that lack of income is a significant barrier to child support payments for 16 to 33 percent of young noncustodial fathers, whom we call “turnips” after the common saying that “You can't get blood from a turnip.” Furthermore, the characteristics of turnips are similar to those of custodial mothers who are long-term welfare recipients—both are disproportionately composed of young, poorly educated, never-married minorities with little work experience. These findings suggest that a new approach to child support enforcement is needed, one that offers these fathers flexible child support orders that both reflect their current economic circumstances and provide employment and training assistance to enable them to meet their child support obligations in the future.     

Reducing child support debt and its consequences: Can forgiveness benefit all?

As child support debt owed nationally persists at enormous levels, both noncustodial parents and the custodial families who are not receiving support suffer significant hardships, and states are forced to expend greater resources on collection and enforcement efforts. This paper presents findings from an evaluation of a demonstration program developed to help noncustodial parents with large child support debts reduce their debt while simultaneously increasing child support paid to families, through gradual forgiveness of arrears conditional on payment of current child support obligations. The evaluation employs a randomized experimental design, nonexperimental analyses using propensity score matching and multilevel modeling techniques, and focus groups and follow‐up interviews. Results show a pattern of effects that suggests individuals responded to the program as intended. State‐ and family‐owed child support debt balances decreased for program participants, and participants paid more toward their child support obligations and arrears and made more frequent child support payments. The study findings suggest promise for the effectiveness of this program model in reducing child support debt burdens and in increasing families' receipt of child support, and they also point to ways in which the implementation of the program might be improved. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Declining employment among young black less‐educated men: The role of incarceration and child support

In this paper, we explore the continuing decline in employment and labor force participation of nonenrolled Black men between the ages of 16 and 34 who have a high school education or less in the 1980s and 1990s. We focus on two fairly new developments: (1) the dramatic growth in the number of young Black men who have been incarcerated and (2) strengthened enforcement of child support policies. We analyze micro‐level data from the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Groups (CPS‐ORG), into which state‐level data over time on incarceration rates and child support enforcement have been merged. Our results indicate that previous incarceration and child support enforcement can account for half or more of the decline in employment activity among Black men aged 25–34. Previous incarceration also contributes to the decline among those aged 16–24. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

How welfare reform affects young children: Experimental findings from Connecticut—A research note

As welfare‐to‐work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random‐assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in young children's early learning and cognitive growth. Children of mothers who entered Connecticut's Jobs First program, an initiative with strict 21‐month time limits and work incentives, displayed moderate advantages in their early learning, compared with those in a control group. A number of potential mechanisms for this effect are explored, including maternal employment and income, home environment, and child care. Mothers in the new welfare program are more likely to be employed, have higher income, are less likely to be married, have more children's books in their home, and take their children to libraries and museums more frequently. However, these effects explain little of the observed gain in child outcomes. Other parenting practices and the home's social environment do explain early learning, but these remained unaffected by welfare reform. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Has welfare reform changed teenage behaviors?

Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979 and 1997 cohorts were used to compare welfare use, fertility, educational attainment, and marriage among teenage women in the years before and immediately following welfare reform. The first objective was to document differences between these cohorts in welfare use and outcomes and behavior correlated with entry into welfare and with future economic and social well‐being. The second objective was to investigate the causal role of welfare reform in behavioral change. Significant differences were found between cohorts in welfare use and in outcomes related to welfare use. Furthermore, difference‐in‐differences estimates suggest that welfare reform has been associated with reduced welfare receipt, reduced fertility, and reduced marriage among young women who, because of a disadvantaged family background, are at high risk of welfare receipt. Finally, in the post‐welfare reform era, teenage mothers are less likely to receive welfare and are more likely to live with at least one parent than in the pre‐reform era. Establishing more definitively that welfare reform is responsible for these changes will require further investigation. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Marriage patterns among unwed mothers: Before and after PRWORA

The promotion of marriage and two‐parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data from the 2002 cycle of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), along with data from the 1995 cycle, allow us to compare pre‐ and post‐PRWORA differences in (1) cumulative marriage rates among unwed mothers, and (2) patterns of marital choice (that is, differences in characteristics of the men these mothers marry, such as their education and employment status). Overall, our results show that unwed childbearing is associated with lower marriage rates and marital quality. Difference‐in‐difference models show that welfare reform was not strongly associated with pre‐ and post‐welfare reform changes in marriage among nonmarital birth mothers, even among the most disadvantaged mothers. Compared with other women, nonmarital birth mothers also were less likely than other women to marry “economically attractive” men in the post‐welfare reform period. The success of marriage promotion initiatives may depend heavily on whether women themselves are “marriageable” and whether potential spouses have the ability to support a stable family life. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Welfare and child support program knowledge gaps reduce program effectiveness

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     

Incentives,challenges, and dilemmas of TANF: A case study

This paper compares the incentives inherent in TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), the U.S. welfare system in place after the 1996 reforms, with those of TANF's predecessor, AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), using the experience in one state, Wisconsin, as an example. Is the new program successful in avoiding the “poverty trap” of the old welfare system, in which the marginal tax rates imposed on earnings and benefits were so high that they discouraged work effort outside a narrow earnings range? As women receiving assistance begin working more hours and earning more, income‐conditioned benefits (Food Stamps, EITC, Medicaid, and subsidies for child care) are reduced and withdrawn, in effect constituting a “tax” on earnings. Under TANF, there is more support for these families, at least in Wisconsin, and so economic well‐being should be higher for most women with earning in this range than it was under AFDC. But marginal tax rates under TANF remain high, and in some income ranges they are higher than under AFDC. Once in the work force, former TANF recipients have earnings over the long run that expose them to very high marginal tax rates, which decrease the benefits of working harder and make it very difficult to gain full eonomic independence. Evidence from other sources suggest that most low‐skilled women have earnings in the same range and so are likely to face similar reductions in benefits such as child care subsidies or the EITC as their earnings increase, even if they are not receiving welfare‐related benefits. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Gender-Related Political Knowledge and the Descriptive Representation of Women

Past scholarship has documented that women tend to know less about politics than men. This study finds that political knowledge of one kind—knowledge about the actual level of women's representation—is related to support for having more women in office. Individuals who underestimate the percentage of women in office are more likely than individuals who know the correct percentage to support increasing women's representation. Meanwhile, individuals who overestimate the percentage of women in office are less likely to support increasing women's representation. Ironically, women are more likely than men to overestimate the presence of women in office. I also find that gender predicts support for having more women in office, with women more supportive than men. Women would be even more supportive of electing more women to office if they were as knowledgeable as men about the extent of women's underrepresentation.     

High School Exit Exams and Dropout in an Era of Increased Accountability

A key form of student‐level accountability is the requirement for students to pass high school exit exams (HSEEs) in order to receive a diploma. In this paper, we examine the impact of HSEEs on dropout during a period when these exams became more common and rigorous. Further, we study whether offering alternate pathways to graduation for students who cannot pass HSEEs moderates any dropout effects. Using a district‐grade‐level panel assembled from the Common Core of Data, we exploit the fact that new exit exam policies first affect a particular graduating class, so we can isolate the impact of exposure to HSEEs for students in one grade in a district separate from other unaffected grades in the same district. We estimate dropout effects by grade for all students, and by race, sex, and urbanicity. We find that HSEEs increase dropout rates for students in the 12th grade, with especially large effects for African‐American students. Dropout effects are uniformly larger in states that do not provide alternate pathways to receive a diploma or alternative credentials for students that cannot pass exit exams. We estimate that 1.25 percent of 12th graders in these states do not graduate with their high school class, likely due to having a diploma withheld because of inability to pass the requisite HSEE. © 2013 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Economic voting and welfare programmes: Evidence from the American states

While scholars have hypothesised that a strong welfare state should reduce voters' incentives to base their votes on economic outcomes, evidence for this proposition remains mixed. This article tests whether differences in welfare protections across American states affect the relationship between economic performance and support for the president's party in 430 state legislative elections from 1970 to 1989. Analysing the results of over 42,000 contests in which an incumbent was running for re‐election, it finds that while unemployment insurance programmes do not affect the importance of economic performance, the electoral fortunes of presidential co‐partisans are less strongly tied to the national economy in states with generous anti‐poverty programmes. Thus by reducing vulnerability to poverty, economic safety‐nets lower the salience of the economy and provide electoral cover for politicians during economic slowdowns.     

“It’s Great When People Don’t Even Have Their Welfare Cases Opened”: TANF Diversion as Process and Lesson

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) encouraged states to reduce welfare caseloads. Caseload reduction can be accomplished by promoting exit for work, marriage, or other private means of support and by diverting new applicants. Most research on caseload decline has focused on welfare‐to‐work outcomes; less is known about processes of diversion. This study employs administrative records and ethnographic data to examine diversion in West County, New York, from 1999 to 2003. Findings demonstrate a high level of diversion and suggest that application is an ongoing and at times remedial process rather than an event. Diversion occurs at all points of the expanded TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) intake process and is associated with one‐time lump sum payments as well as the hassle factor engendered by new eligibility requirements. The encumbered lives of applicants and TANF staff discretion are also implicated as factors contributing to diversion. We conclude with an analysis of the implications of TANF diversion for access to benefits.     

Special Education Financing and ADHD Medications: A Bitter Pill to Swallow

Accurate diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children is difficult because the major symptoms, inattentiveness and hyperactivity, can be exhibited by any child. This study finds evidence of systematic differences in diagnosis and treatment of ADHD due to third party financial incentives. In some states, due to the financing mechanism for special education, schools face a financial incentive to facilitate the identification of children with ADHD. Using variation in special education funding policies across states, we find that children living in states with financial incentives are about 15 percent more likely to report having ADHD and are about 22 percent more likely to be taking medication for ADHD. We provide support that these findings are causal by leveraging variation from two states that implemented policy changes during the time period studied.