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.     

The Impacts of State Capital Management Programs on State Economic Performance

Although the normative literature advocates systematic capital management practices, empirical studies investigating the tangible benefits of these practices are rare. Based on previous findings that public investment affects economic growth, this study extends the model of government spending and economic growth to investigate the effect of systematic capital management programs on state economic performance. Using panel data from 1997 to 2004 and the Government Performance Project's data on state capital management practices, the empirical results indicate that highly systematic capital management programs positively alter the relationship between the state's capital spending levels and the state's economic growth rate.     

State Taxation of Interstate Sales: Enforcement Problems and Prospects

In their search for additional revenues, state governments in recent years have turned greater attention to collection of use taxes. Growth in interstate mail order sales has vastly increased the potential yield from use taxes, but Supreme Court decisions have limited the ability of states to effectively collect the tax. States have attempted to overcome enforcement barriers by joining in interstate use tax compliance compacts, and promoting congressional legislation to overcome constitutional prohibitions.     

Government Support Programs and Private Investments in PPP Markets

ABSTRACT:

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become an important tool for investing in and developing public infrastructure and services. However, many developing countries have failed to attract sufficient private investment from the PPP market. This article uses data from 4,484 PPP projects across 130 developing countries to investigate if and how distinct types of government support can attract more private investment. Results showed that capital, revenue, and in-kind subsidies directly provided from governments attract more private capital, while indirect supports through government guarantee policies do not. The institutional quality of a country enhances the positive relationship between direct government support and private PPP investments. Further, risk allocation plays a mediating role between government supports and private investment.     

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。     

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.     

The Influence of Federal Regional Offices on State Medicaid Maternal and Child Health-Care Services

This article focuses on the influence of federal regional administrativeoffices on maternal and child health-care services in stateMedicaid programs. The empirical results demonstrate that regionaladministrative offices affect the adoption of state policy choices.More traditional economic and political variables seem to havelittle direct impact These findings provide important insightsinto the role of federal regional offices in state Medicaidmaternal and child health-care services. They emphasize theneed for further empirical research on the exact processes bywhich regional administrative offices exert their impact onthe American policy process.     

The Distributive Politics of Enforcement

Why do some politicians tolerate the violation of the law? In contexts where the poor are the primary violators of property laws, I argue that the answer lies in the electoral costs of enforcement: Enforcement can decrease support from poor voters even while it generates support among nonpoor voters. Using an original data set on unlicensed street vending and enforcement operations at the subcity district level in three Latin American capital cities, I show that the combination of voter demographics and electoral rules explains enforcement. Supported by qualitative interviews, these findings suggest how the intentional nonenforcement of law, or forbearance, can be an electoral strategy. Dominant theories based on state capacity poorly explain the results.     

State TANF Spending: Predictors of State Tax Effort to Support Welfare Reform

State spending on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) greatly varies. Combined federal and state spending by the states per TANF family or recipient reflects the historic level of state generosity for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the failure of the federal government to set any minimum spending standard for the states, and the failure of the federal government to adjust federal grants for huge changes in state TANF caseloads. Our multivariate analysis shows that state spending for TANF is greatly influenced by the percentage of the state population that is black, the percentage of the state population that is on TANF (especially if a significant percentage of the rolls consist of black recipients), and the economic conditions within the state. Some states spend as much as their economies will allow, while other states spend far below capacity. Despite the very different goals of TANF, state spending is still heavily influenced by their historic approach to AFDC.     

State Constitutional Limits on Legislative Procedure: Legislative Compliance and Judicial Enforcement

Most state constitutions contain detailed restrictions on thelegislative process. Violations of some of these restrictions(e.g., single-subject requirements) are reflected on the faceof a final enactment. Other violations (e.g., alteration ofa bill to change its original purpose) are not evident in thefinal enactment, but require investigation of the legislativeprocess. State courts have developed a variety of approachesto these second types of violations, from excluding all evidencebeyond the enactment to permitting any evidence of constitutionalviolations. The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act was passedin apparent violation of both types of constitutional restrictions.The legislative debates reflected legislators' attitudes aboutsuch restrictions, but the Pennsylvania courts refuse to enforcethem. After surveying other judicial approaches, the articlediscusses the legislative and executive obligation to followconstitutional restrictions, regardless of judicial enforcement.The article then advocates increased judicial enforcement, whilemaintaining proper deference to the legislature.     

浅论执行权性质及执行机关重构

在我国对执行权性质的不同认识导致了执行权的归属、行使的混乱状况,严重影响了法制建设.执行权究其本质来说是行政权,应当由行政机关行使,因而应当将执行权从法院之中剥离出来,成立由司法行政部门主管的民事执行局,行使具有财产执行内容的法院判决、仲裁裁决和公证文书的执行职能,这样就现成了主要由司法行政部门集中执行法院刑事、民事判决和具有财产执行内容的仲裁裁决、公证文书的分权格局.     

The Effect of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act of 1998 on Rewarded and Unrewarded Performance Goals

This paper examines the impact of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act (CSPIA) of 1998 on child support performance measures that are rewarded financially as well as outcomes that are not rewarded. Three of the five performance measures explicitly rewarded by CSPIA are reconstructed in this analysis, as are two child support outcomes that were considered for financial rewards but were ultimately rejected. Using a panel interrupted time series model with state fixed effects and state‐specific trends, this analysis finds that CSPIA had a statistically positive impact on just one rewarded performance goal, cost‐effectiveness, and negatively impacted an unrewarded child support outcome—collections sent to other states. Effect sizes suggest that CSPIA had little impact on child support performance, on balance. These results provide more evidence to the ongoing debate about the ability of performance incentives to improve public sector performance. It also suggests that reforming performance systems in response to perceived problems may create new gaming responses.     

Metropolitan Governance: Voter Support and State Legislative Prospects

With increased public attention to the problems in both centralcities and suburban areas, the feasibility of metropolitan governanceis being considered again. Myron Orfield's work on regionalcooperation in Minneapolis-St. Paul has suggested that statelegislative action can be used to achieve that outcome. However,state legislators are unlikely to promote regional policiesunless they have some evidence their constituents support them.This article uses election data from California propositionsto test the connection that Orfield asserts between demographiccomposition of an area and voter support for regional issues.The data suggest several shortcomings of his model, includingthat race or ethnicity and the diversity of an area substantiallyaffect the outcome in ways he did not consider.     

论我国执法制度的重理

执法制度的重理是我国改善执法状况、提高执法水平的需要，也是我国加入WT0后政府行为适应调整的需要。根据目前我国执法中存在的问题，我国执法制度的重理主要涉及执法形式重理、执法组织重理、国家公务员管理重理、执法方式重理、执法程序重理等。     

Getting the Order Right: Child Support Guidelines and the Cost of Raising Children

This article argues that the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) estimates of parental expenditures on children are an appropriate economic foundation for state child support guidelines. The USDA’s estimates are consistent with the public policy purposes of state guidelines and may improve the extent to which they accomplish federal intent. The article examines the role of valid and reliable child cost estimates in advancing the policy objectives for child support, summarizes the theoretical and empirical challenges of estimating those costs, suggests the limitations of the most widely used estimation methods in relation to the policy purposes described earlier, and evaluates the USDA’s method in relation to those same purposes. The evidence suggests that guidelines based on the USDA’s estimates are more likely than the most commonly used estimates to yield adequate child support orders and to allocate economic responsibility for children appropriately among the custodial parent, the noncustodial parent, and the state.     

The politics of social assistance in South Africa: How protests and electoral politics shape the Child Support Grant

Since the 1990s, South Africa, like many other countries from the Global South, has provided extensive social assistance for the poor. The literature on these policies, however, is largely dominated by structuralist accounts, and it largely overlooks political factors. We conducted quantitative analyses regarding the South African flagship Child Support Grant (CSG) program and investigated how contentious and electoral political dynamics jointly shape the provision of this program. Based on a logistic regression analysis, we measured the effect of protest participation, voting preference, and their interaction on the likelihood of CSG receipt. Our analysis showed that CSG receipt is much higher among “uncontentious supporters” of ANC and “contentious nonsupporters,” as well as those who join violent protests. This lends support for our argument that CSG is being used as a tool for electoral politics and containment of unrest, providing fresh evidence for political mediation theories of social policy.     

Supervised Devolution: The Case of Child-Support Enforcement

Supervised devolution in the area of child-support enforcementhas produced a tenuous but politically popular sharing of powerbetween the federal government and the states for more thantwo decades. In this paradigm, policy has proceeded simultaneouslyalong two developmental tracks. Along the first track, the federalgovernment has pushed states toward reform by establishing thelegal framework for the program. Along the second track, thefederal government also has granted the states freedom to experimentwith a variety of new policies, including those that targetan extremely important group: low-income fathers. This freedom,however, is not without its limits. The federal government activelysupervises the states' performance through a combination offinancial incentives, penalties, and funding for demonstrationprojects. When the states have innovated in a particularly noteworthydirection, the federal government has followed through withappropriate rewards. When they have faltered, the states havefaced negative repercussions. Future challenges to this delicatebalance of power include processing interstate cases, adaptingto a changing clientele base, and resolving outstanding cost-sharingissues.