Expenditures on children and child support guidelines

This article examines the literature that estimates parental expenditures on children; describes the types of child support guidelines that are being used by the states; and compares how the child support awards that emerge from each state's guidelines compare to the empirical estimates of expenditure patterns on children. The findings indicate that the states' guidelines appear to be more or less consistent with the estimates of expenditures on children. In a few cases, however, the guidelines require less in support from the noncustodial parent than the parent would have spent on the child(ren) in an average intact family. In many other cases, the guidelines require child support payments that are very close to the lower bound of the estimates of expenditures. This article concludes with a discussion of the difficult value judgments that ultimately must be made in setting child support awards.     

Effective child support policy for low‐income families: evidence from street level research

Since 1984, policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to reforming the child support system. Despite this attention, the child support system has often failed to increase the economic security of single‐parent families. This article analyzes findings from recent qualitative studies to explain why the child support system breaks down for so many low‐income families. This research suggests that parents often prefer informal arrangements of support and do not comply with child support regulations they perceive to be unfair, counterproductive, or punitive. It also suggests that there is a mismatch between the premises and goals of child support policy and what low‐income parents desire from the system. This mismatch impedes low‐income parents' willingness and ability to comply with existing policy, even when they wish to do so, and will make reform difficult. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Reversal of Favorable Child Living Arrangement Trends of the Late 1990s

During the late 1990s, there was a notable shift in child living arrangements toward two‐parent households and away from single parenthood. Whether due to economic factors, declining teen birth rates, welfare reform, or some other cultural cause or a combination of these factors, something happened in the 1990s that stabilized marriage rates and led to declines in single‐parent households. There was also considerable hope that the federal welfare reforms enacted in 1996 might be responsible for the change in these trends. However, since 2000, while the downward trend in teen births continues, the gains in percentage of children living with two parents have been virtually eliminated. This article carefully documents these recent trends, examines the relationship of recessions on child living arrangements, and concludes that it is impossible to disentangle the role of welfare reform from its broader economic, policy, and demographic context.     

Trade-offs implicit in child-support guidelines

Recent U.S. federal legislation required states to establish mandatory judicial guidelines for the setting of child-support awards. An equivalence-based approach is used to compare three formulae (two in use, one proposed) to three theoretical benchmarks, to clarify unavoidable trade-offs in the choice of a guideline.

1 Generally, the formulae in use leave children worse off economically than would the benchmark formulae.

Since the economic well-being of children cannot be separated from that of their custodial parent, that which most privileges children's welfare will usually privilege the custodial parent over the absent parent, and what appears more fair between the two adults may be less favorable to the children. Another possible trade-off is between children's welfare and work incentives: The guidelines that prescribe larger awards are those with higher implied marginal tax rates. Despite their work disincentive effects, the formulae with higher marginal tax rates are more favorable to children's economic interests.     

Political sophistication affects how citizens’ social policy preferences respond to the economy

Theoretical and empirical accounts of public opinion show that people’s social policy preferences are affected by the state of economy. According to the countercyclical view, economic downturn increases citizens’ demands for social policy whereas the procyclical view states that citizens demand less social policy during economically tough times. This article argues that individuals’ differences in political sophistication and, specifically, the commonly associated social-psychological characteristics are part of the micro-foundations for those different responses. People acquire and process information differently, which influences their political preferences. Public opinion and macroeconomic data from Europe during the economic crisis support the argument. The results show that people with lower levels of political sophistication tend to be procyclical, whereas this relationship weakens and moves towards countercyclical opinion structures with increasing levels of sophistication. These findings help to explain social policy preferences in response to the economy, and they offer insights into the origins of social policy preferences.     

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.     

家庭、国家与儿童福利供给

儿童抚育事务在传统上主要由家庭承担。工业革命之后,西方国家才开始系统关注并发展儿童社会福利,为抚育儿童的父母提供制度化的国家支持,并对父母亲权的实践进行国家监督。尽管不同的儿童社会福利理论对于如何界定家庭与国家在儿童抚育与儿童福利供给过程中的关系模式存有分歧,但是,关注得不到家庭适当抚育的儿童的福利,并为其提供必要的福利服务,已经成为现代国家的共识。鉴于我国传统的以家庭为主的儿童抚育模式出现失灵,积极发展选择性的儿童福利服务具有其充分的合理性。     

Who gains,who loses from changing U.S. child support policies?

This article examines the empirical and theoretical research on child support policies to assess the effects of recent changes on the well-being of women, men, and children. In addition to considering the intra-family and inter-family distributional effects of child support payments across gender, race, and income categories, the essay explores several criteria central to a feminist cost-benefit analysis. Thus, recent changes in child support policies are analyzed in relation to the prevention of poverty, the reduction of women's economic dependence on men, and the reduction of gender inequalities in income and leisure time.     

Ideological hybrids: the contrary case of Tory anarchism

This article provides an account of ideological hybridity. It describes and categorizes four main types of ideological hybrid in order to examine a range of sub-ideologies and cross-breeds but concentrates on identifying and assessing the particular phenomena described as conservative (or ‘Tory’) anarchisms. The article demonstrates how an ideological hybrid’s morphological relationship to its parent ideologies can alter in different geographical or historical contexts. Using this model, it argues that some differences between conservatism and anarchism are overstressed (such as those over the role of the state and individual rights), whilst some important similarities are often overlooked, namely those surrounding their political epistemologies. However, because apparently shared concepts are structured next to radically different core principles (defence/rejection of hierarchies and prioritizing/negation of dominant economic institutions), these shared principles are interpreted in radically different ways. As a result, conservative anarchism is a deeply unstable hybrid rather than an innovative new ideological form. It is one which, in most contexts, stabilizes into a form of conservatism rather than a form of anarchism.     

Parenthood and social policy preferences: A gender and time sensitive examination

Attitudes towards social spending and the welfare state have been characterised by one of the longest standing and widest gender gaps. Past research suggests that parenthood deepens this divide further. Yet, the exact relationship between parenthood and support for social policies – and the gendered nature of this process – has been difficult to establish because it can vary across welfare policy areas and the age of the children, which past studies, relying on cross-sectional data, has found difficult to unravel. Using panel data from the Swiss Household Panel, we examine individual level changes in fathers’ and mothers’ views towards specific welfare state policies. We find that individuals’ support for social spending fluctuates at different stages of parenthood, and that mothers’ demands differ from fathers’ in relation to care related but not in terms of educational spending. This implies that parents are not a homogeneous group that parties could target with uniform electoral pledges. As a result, building widespread electoral support for expanding a broad range of social investment policies is likely to be challenging in a context where, first and foremost, self-interest appears to drive (or depress) individuals’ support for specific welfare state policies.     

Packaging Support for Low‐Income Families: Policy Variation across the United States

This paper addresses a gap in state‐level comparative social policy research by analyzing policies that support low‐income families with children. Variation in state policy “packages” is measured by considering three characteristics of 11 social programs. Individual measures of policy are found to be weakly and inconsistently inter‐correlated at the state level, but when cluster analysis is used to analyze multiple dimensions simultaneously, five clusters or regime types are identified that have distinctive policy approaches. These range from the most minimal provisions, to conservative approaches emphasizing private responsibility, to integrated approaches that combine generous direct assistance with employment support and policies that enforce family responsibility. A comparison of a subset of programs at two points in time (1994 and 1998) suggests that states made substantial changes in cash assistance and taxation policies after the 1996 federal welfare reforms. The magnitude and direction of these changes remained consistent with the state clusters identified in 1994. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Managing anxiety: neoliberal modes of citizen subjectivity,fantasy and child abuse in New Zealand

The neoliberal direction of social policy under New Zealand’s fifth National government (2008–) is demonstrated in its 2012 White Paper for Vulnerable Children. This document advocates increased monitoring and policing of welfare populations and the downgrading of child protection policy to a technical administrative system for managing ‘risky’ families. The White Paper’s release came soon after the coroner’s report into the deaths of the ‘Kahui twins’, which were treated by the media as a shocking case of child abuse, and exemplified the media’s use of a fantasy of a ‘savage’ Maori welfare underclass in reporting cases of child abuse. Drawing on Isin’s analysis of ‘governing through neurosis’, this article explores how these media and policy discourses reinforce normative patterns of neoliberal citizen subjectivity by offering compelling pathways out of anxiety that re-route citizens’ anxiety over child abuse in support of neoliberal modes of citizen subjectivity.     

Economic Insecurity,the Social Market Economy,and Support for the German Left

This article explores the relationship between hard economic times, inequality, and support for the far Left, using the case of Die Linke, or ‘Left party’, in Germany. Using recent survey data, the relationship among voters' social characteristics, economic attitudes, and rising electoral support for Die Linke is explored. In Germany, support for the far Left does not appear to be based solely on ideological extremism or economic pessimism, but also on beliefs about economic inequalities and governmental policy responses. This evidence indicates that supporters of the far Left are not simply ‘the losers’ from economic modernisation, but rather citizens in both Eastern and Western Germany characterised by shared social and economic circumstances and similar beliefs about economic redistribution. It also suggests fruitful avenues for research on the relationship between economic decline and support for the Left across advanced industrial democracies.     

The Georgia Lottery: Assessing Its Administrative, Economic, and Political Effects

This article examines the Georgia lottery as a “policy laboratory” and its potential effect on state‐level policy diffusion. The authors summarize an extensive research project they directed that included a survey of every state that offers a lottery, a general population survey of Georgia citizen attitudes toward the lottery, and results from an economic model summarizing the economic effects of the lottery. The analysis reveals that the Georgia lottery has been a significant source of revenue for the state's budget and operates in an administratively cost‐effective manner. The analysis also confirms the conventional wisdom that lower‐income households spend a greater proportionate share of their income on the lottery and that African Americans are more frequent players than whites. Furthermore, the Georgia lottery enjoys broad public support, the key to which appears to be the earmarking of lottery funds to specific, new, popular education programs. However, the data reveal that those educational programs promulgated by the Georgia lottery benefit citizens from both high and low socioeconomic status. Finally, the article suggests that lottery‐generated funds may reach a plateau or peak during the first decade of implementation and that state policymakers should design lottery‐funded programs accordingly.     

Australia's Children ‘Safe and Well’?1 Collaborating with Purpose Across Commonwealth Family Relationship and State Child Protection Systems

So ubiquitous is reference to collaboration in policy documents that it is in danger of being ignored altogether by service deliverers who are not clear about its rationale, how it is built, or its real value. This is evident in the child and family services context where for example the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children calls for collaboration and a ‘shared responsibility’ across the state, Commonwealth and the non‐government sectors to keep children safe and well. This article describes a project undertaken to analyse and ultimately increase levels of collaboration between state and Commonwealth government family service providers. The research reinforced an important message that levels of collaboration should align with the vulnerability of children and their families: the greater the level of risks to children, the greater the level of collaboration needed within and between systems to keep children safe.     

Governing the Chinese Economy: Regulatory Reform in the Service of the State

Pursuant to its extensive program of market reforms, China’s government tried to restructure itself to support a market‐dominated economy. Reform efforts have included elements that are familiar to scholars of public administration: streamlining government, strengthening bureaucratic capacity, distancing government from firms, and establishing independent regulators. But how deep have these reforms been, and with what ultimate goals? This article examines a crucial segment of the economy—China’s so‐called lifeline industries—to show how reforms to China’s economic governance system have been mapped onto an existing system characterized by extreme institutional fragmentation and an inability to imbue new governmental bodies with authority. Moreover, for these key industrial sectors, the Chinese party‐state’s strong interests in ownership, revenues, and social policy dictate that it use a variety of tools to protect these interests.     

Childhood bads,parenting goods,and the right to procreate

Abstract

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, together with many other philosophers, think that adults’ interests in raising a child can give them a moral right to parent when they will be adequate parents. We consider whether the same interest could give such adults a moral right to procreate, as a means of acquiring a child to raise. We argue that the interest in parenting cannot support a right to procreate, because the features of childhood that make parenting uniquely valuable for adults are bad for children. Adults may have a right to procreate, but they do not have that right due to their interest in a parent–child relationship.     

Economic Globalization and Policy Choices: Singapore

This article analyzes the effects of economic globalization on public policy in Singapore, which has the worlds most globalized economy. It finds that contrary to the assumption of muck of the literature on the subject, it is the state, rather than systemic imperatives, that has played the most decisive role in shaping the form and scope of the economy's globalization. Its examination of the effects of globalization on policy choices in three broad areas—economic development, national security, and social development—in Singapore shows that globalization has not only constrained policy choices, but expanded them as well. The case study suggests that we need to ascribe greater centrality to the agency of the state in the globalization process and develop a more nuanced conception of the opportunities it affords and the constraints it imposes.     

家庭照料视角下家庭生育决策影响因素研究

根据北京市人口研究所2013年东城区居民生育意愿调查数据研究发现：家庭照料对家庭生育决策的影响因家庭所处生命周期的不同而有所差异，老年人能否为子女下一代提供足够的照料资源，是子女生育决策选择的重要影响因素。目前北京市育龄人群大部分处在照料孩子的单压力下，当生育第二个孩子时，老年人照料和儿童照料双重照料重叠交叉的可能性更大，儿童照料资源的供给将越来越成为制约生育决策的关键因素。家庭如何寻找新的替代性儿童照料资源或者国家和社会能够为儿童照料提供何种帮助是决定未来家庭生育决策选择的关键，因此要构建家庭友好型政策以积极应对。     

Child support: Interstate Dimensions

The failure of uniform state laws and other forms of interstatecooperation to solve the problem of collection of child supportby a custodial parent from a reluctant obligor in another stateled Congress to employ incrementally conditional grants-in-aidto regulate states' efforts to enforce child support orders.Congressional action has produced limited results and the proposalhas been advanced for establishment of an exclusive federalgovernment child support system. Our analysis suggests thatCongress lacks authority to establish such a system and interstatecollection of child support will continue to be a serious problem.