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 effect of routine income withholding of child support collections

Recent federal legislation requires states to make substantial improvements in paternity establishment, enact numeric child support standards for determining child support awards, update those awards at least every three years, and adopt routine income withholding of all child support obligations. Data gathered for the purpose of evaluating the Wisconsin Child Support Assurance System make it possible to examine the effects of routine income withholding on the size and regularity of child support payments. The data consisted of court records of child support cases that entered the court system in 20 Wisconsin counties between 1980 and 1986. Our estimates suggest routine income withholding increases child support payments by between 11 and 30 percent.     

Improving child support enforcement for children receiving SSI

Less than half of all children who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits and live in a single-parent home receive child support services. Although filing for child support is a condition of eligibility for income assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), it is not a condition of eligibility for SSI benefits. Requiring single custodial parents applying for SSI on behalf of their children to pursue child support payments might result in more children on SSI receiving child support, and since the Social Security Administration (SSA) excludes one-third of child support when determining benefit amounts, increased receipt of child support would enhance the financial well-being of SSI children. Improving access to data on child support would enhance the integrity of the SSI program by reducing overpayments to children receiving child support. This article looks at the child support provisions in SSI and other means-tested programs and discusses policy options for improving receipt of child support and access to related data. Requiring cooperation with child support enforcement agencies would be consistent with the philosophy that the SSI program should serve as a program of last resort. Whenever possible, both parents should take primary responsibility for their children. While such a requirement has the potential to improve the financial status of children receiving SSI, factors such as their low-income status and their involvement with the TANF program raise questions about how much those children will actually benefit from such a requirement. Even if many additional children do not receive child support, the requirement demonstrates SSA's dedication to the stewardship of the SSI program. However, if custodial parents fail to comply with the requirement, children may be worse off as a result of the requirement. SSA should carefully pursue a requirement to induce cooperation while protecting children to the greatest extent possible. Improving access to child support data would enhance the integrity of the SSI program by reducing overpayments to children receiving child support. Given the reality of limited administrative resources as well as the apparent difficulties of gaining access to the needed child support data, SSA must decide which data matches to pursue and which requirements enhance the program enough to justify the additional resources. Although the options discussed in this article may be chosen independently, there are important interactions to consider. For example, although a requirement to pursue support might result in more children receiving child support, SSA would still rely on parents to report that income unless it was able to gain better access to child support data. Implementing the option to require cooperation with child support enforcement (CSE) agencies could improve verification of income from child support if field offices developed better communication with local CSE offices. However, by itself, it would not have as great an effect on overpayments as would having direct access to child support data. In a 1999 report, the General Accounting Office acknowledged that the potential benefit reductions would be offset by the cost for SSA to administer a child support cooperation requirement and by the costs to the CSE programs to provide services. The report suggested that the goals of promoting parental responsibility and increasing the income of children receiving SSI should be pursued despite the costs. Requiring cooperation may increase administrative costs by $6 million over 5 years and may result in program savings. Gaining access to data may be more expensive and may not prevent overpayments to the same extent as other data-matching workloads on which SSA has placed a priority. SSA should continue to work with federal child support enforcement and with individual states to develop a cost-effective way to identify child support income.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

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.     

The effect of child support on welfare exits and re‐entries

Much of the literature on welfare dynamics has focused on the effects of recipient characteristics and state‐level characteristics such as welfare benefits and economic conditions; there has been very little analysis on the effects of child support. This paper, using the 1979‐1996 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, examines whether child support affects the likelihood of leaving and re‐entering welfare. The results indicate that strong child support enforcement is important in helping young mothers exit and stay off welfare. Women with $1000 child support payments in the previous year were 18 percent more likely to exit welfare and 12 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. Compared with women in states that pursued child support least vigorously, women in states that had passed extensive child support enforcement legislation and that spent more money on child support enforcement were 79 percent more likely to exit welfare and about 60 percent less likely to re‐enter welfare. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Discouraging Disadvantaged Fathers’ Employment: An Unintended Consequence of Policies Designed to Support Families

Substantial declines in employment and earnings among disadvantaged men may be exacerbated by child support enforcement policies that are designed to help support families but may have the unintended consequence of discouraging fathers’ employment. Disentangling causal effects is challenging because high child support debt may be both a cause and a consequence of unemployment and low child support order compliance. We used childbirth costs charged in unmarried mothers’ Medicaid‐covered childbirths, from Wisconsin administrative records, as an exogenous source of variation to identify the impact of debt. We found that greater debt has a substantial negative effect on fathers’ formal employment and child support payments, and that this effect is mediated by fathers’ prebirth earnings histories.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Unchanging child support orders in the face of unstable earnings

The underlying theory behind child support guidelines implies that child support orders should change when the incomes of noncustodial parents change. This paper documents changes in noncustodial fathers' earnings over a five‐year period and examines the relationship between the changes in earnings and modifications in child support orders. Using detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin, the authors examine the history of orders and earnings for fathers in couples who had their first child support ordered in 2000. A substantial proportion of fathers experience large changes in earnings, but relatively few of the associated child support orders are modified. Using discrete‐time multinomial event history models that consider time‐varying variables and control for censored observations, we find some evidence of changes in earnings being associated with changes in orders, all else equal, but the relationship is relatively weak and order changes are not proportional to earnings changes. The findings highlight the challenges and importance of developing policies that result in child support orders being more responsive to changes in fathers' incomes. © 2010 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

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.     

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.     

PROMISES, PROMISES: CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION IN THE 1980s

The article reviews the history of the evolution of the definition of child abuse as a social problem, then analyzes the related legislative efforts to respond to the problem, giving special emphasis to child abuse prevention. Program outcomes of relevant primary prevention programs are discussed, as well as studies attempting to predict risk of child abuse. Specific conclusions related to the viability of primary prevention of violence to children are presented.     

What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long‐term rent subsidies, short‐term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow‐up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long‐term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well‐being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long‐term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem.     

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.     

农村留守青少年成长问题及社会工作应对策略分析——以《学校社会工作》课程的实践为例

农村留守青少年属于新式的弱势群体。该群体的成长问题事关和谐社会的持续发展和社会的稳定。由于父母亲情的缺失所引起的种种问题已得到学术界和政府相关部门的关注,但就针对该群体成长危机方面的解决措施而言,始终缺少一个合理、持久和有效的力量来协助该群体解决成长必须应对的危机。尝试在留守青少年集中的中学引入社会工作者,通过开展相关的社会工作实务活动后发现,学校社会工作者的介入能很好地解决这个问题。学校社会工作者充当多重角色,能充分利用多理论的指导和多种方法的交互运用,能及时、有效地关注并解决青少年成长过程中的心理需求和行为规范。     

Using the tax system to collect fines

In this article we consider the possibility that fines could be collected through the tax and social welfare systems in the same way as higher education contributions and child support payments are currently administered. We argue that the existing system of fine collection and enforcement leads to high default rates and reduces the usefulness of fines as a sanction. We consider a range of models for the implementation of an income-related fine collection system, and discuss their possible implications for issues including judicial independence, the time taken to repay fines and aggregate fine revenue.