View Research by Author - Elaine Sorensen

More about Elaine Sorensen's areas of expertise can be found on this Urban Institute expert's page.

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/ElaineSorensen

This paper examines the noncustodial parent earned income tax credit (NCP EITC), a new type of credit recently enacted in New York and Washington, D.C. and proposed by Senator Bayh and then-Senator Obama in 2007. The NCP EITC offers an earned income tax credit to low-income noncustodial parents who work and pay their full child support. This paper describes the rationale for this policy and provides national estimates of the benefits and costs of an NCP EITC under three alternative policy scenarios. It also discusses several key design and implementation issues.

In 2006, New York became the first state in the country to enact legislation that consists of two innovative policies that are designed to help low-income noncustodial parents (mostly fathers) find work and pay the full amount of their current child support called the Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative. This report describes this initiative and gives detailed information about the five pilot sites that are providing employment services to low-income noncustodial parents in the following New York communities: Buffalo, Jamestown, New York City and Syracuse. It is the first of several reports that will describe this initiative and its results over the next two years.

This report was prepared in response to a mandate from the California State Legislature to analyze how much of the $14.4 billion in child support arrears owed statewide in March 2000 was realistically collectible. Child support arrears had grown dramatically in California during the prior decade and state legislators were concerned about their collectibility. The Urban Institute estimated that $3.8 billion, or 26% of the $14.4 billion, would be collected over 10 years. The reason that so little arrears are likely to be collected is that most of the arrears are owed by individuals who owe more than $20,000 in arrears and have relatively low incomes.

In 2003, the Texas Office of Attorney General fundamentally altered the process of establishing child support orders, going from a highly judicial process of establishing orders to a process that establishes most orders administratively. It also substantially improved the issuance of income withholding orders. This report describes the implementation of these reforms and measures their impact. It finds that, after the reforms were implemented, the amount of time it takes to establish child support orders and income withholding orders on newly opened cases declined significantly and the amount of arrears assessed on newly established orders declined significantly, suggesting a highly successful initiative.

In September 2007, child support arrears had reached $107 billion. The purpose of this report is to provide information about the individuals who owe child support arrears, estimate how much arrears are likely to be collected, and identify the factors that have led to their rapid growth. We find that most arrears are owed by noncustodial parents who have no or low reported incomes. We estimate that 40 percent of arrears in seven large states are likely to be collected over 10 years. The primary reason arrears have grown is because many states have begun to assess interest on arrears.

In FY 2007, the national child support program served 17 million children and collected $25 billion in child support, yet little is known about the underlying demographic and economic characteristics of the individuals served. To remedy this lack of information, Courtland Consulting and the Urban Institute, under contract with the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, surveyed nine state child support programs about their caseloads. We found that state child support programs are able to provide considerable amounts of information about their clients, but key characteristics proved difficult to obtain, such as the poverty status of the families served.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 includes incentives for states to increase the amount of child support that is "passed through" to families on welfare, rather than retained to offset welfare expenditures. Beginning October 1, 2008, the federal government will share in the costs of a $100 per month pass-through for families with one child and a $200 per month pass-through for families with two or more children. This brief discusses the potential benefits and costs to families, states, and the federal government if all states implemented a $100/$200 pass-through and disregard.

In 2002, 4.7 million children lived apart from their mother, up from 3.7 million in 1997. Despite their growing numbers, nonresident mothers and their children have remained largely under the radar. This brief provides a national portrait of nonresident mothers and their children, using data from the 2002 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF). It shows that nearly 40 percent of children living apart from their mother live apart from both of their parents. Most of these children do not receive child support and those living apart from both parents experience relatively high rates of poverty. Nonetheless, nonresident mothers are more economically insecure than their children who live elsewhere. Despite these high poverty rates, many of these children may benefit from increased child support enforcement.

In this paper, we document the continuing decline in employment and labor force participation of black men between the ages of 16 and 34 who have a high school education or less. We explore the extent to which these trends can be accounted for in recent years by 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 use micro-level data from the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Groups (CPS-ORG), along with state-level data over time on incarceration rates and child support enforcement, to test these hypotheses. Our results indicate that post-incarceration effects and child support policies both contribute to the decline in employment activity among young black less-educated men in the past two decades, especially among those age 25-34.

Thirty-six percent of poor children living with single mothers received child support in 2001, up from 31 percent in 1996. Near-poor children saw child support receipt increase from 45 percent in 1996 to 50 percent in 2001. Child support was 30 percent of a share of a poor family's income in 2001.

Return to list of authors