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Abstract:
Using a more comprehensive accounting than previous studies, we examined the economic impact of child support orders on residential mothers and children compared to nonresidential fathers and how that impact differed across income levels. With the inclusion of child support and other expenses associated with raising children, the well-being of mothers and children fell by 37% compared to a decline of 16% for nonresident fathers, relative to their standard of living while intact. We also found significant differences in the child support obligation rate across income levels with low- and middle-income fathers facing much greater child support obligations than high-income fathers. Additionally, although the poverty rates of low-income fathers were high at 28%, those for low-income mothers and children were almost 3-fold higher at 73%.
Key Words: child support order, economic well-being, low-income fathers, resident mothers.
Nationwide inequity and inadequacy of child support was documented by researchers and acknowledged by policymakers nearly three decades ago, leading to a consensus that unless concerted public policy efforts were undertaken, the growing number of children in single-parent families faced serious economic risk in the short run as well as imperiled futures in the long run. These concerns, coupled with the expectation that increased child support from nonresidential parents would lessen the demands on the public purse, led to the establishment of Title IV-D of the Social security Act in 1975, the Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984, and the Family Support Act of 1988. Additionally, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (informally known as the Welfare Reform Act) included elements designed to improve child support payments (Garfinkel, McLanahan, Meyer, & Seltzer, 1998; Pirog & Ziol-Guest, 2006). Although the first wave of child support research emphasized the economic straits of residential mothers and children, more recently social scientists have begun to examine child support payments from the vantage point of the impact on fathers, particularly low-income fathers (Garfinkel, McLanahan, Meyer, et al., 1998; Huang, Mincy, & Garfinkel, 2005; Sorensen & Oliver, 2002; Sorensen & Zibman, 2001). Additionally, concerns about unfair child support payments led to the establishment of many fathers' rights groups across the country who have lobbied state legislatures to reconsider these obligations. Thus, policymakers appear to face a troubling trade-off: improving...