Assessing the New Federalism is a multiyear Urban Institute project designed to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, employment and training programs, and social services. Alan Weil is the project director. Researchers monitor program changes and fiscal developments. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies changes in family well-being. The project aims to provide timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help state and local decisionmakers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.
Key components of the project include a household survey, studies of policies in 13 states, and a database with information on all states and the District of Columbia, available at the Urban Institute's Web site. This paper is one in a series of discussion papers analyzing information from these and other sources.
The project has received funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Commonwealth Fund, the Stuart Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, the Fund for New Jersey, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Rockerfeller Foundation.
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Contents
Introduction
Trends in Child Support Receipt
Prior Research Findings
Background Information on the Key Actors in Child Support
The Government's Role in Ensuring That Child Support Is Paid
Factors Affecting the Mother's Desire for Child Support
Factors Affecting the Father's Willingness to Pay Child Support
Resulting Hypotheses
Econometric Model
Data
March Current Population Surveys
Child Support Enforcement Data
Other State-Level Control Variables
Regression Results
Overall Impact of the Expansion of the Child Support Enforcement System
Impact of Specific Child Support Enforcement Policies
Single Mothers' Characteristics
State Labor Market Characteristics and Welfare Generosity
Summary
Notes
References
Appendix
About the Authors
Introduction
In the aggregate, it appears that little progress has been made in the last two decades in single mothers' receipt of child support, suggesting that child support enforcement has not done its job. In 1997, 30.7 percent of single mothers received child support, a figure that is less than one percentage point higher than 21 years earlier. Congress created an open-ended entitlement to child support enforcement services during this period and, along with the states, has spent over $30 billion to implement this program since its inception in 1975. How can it be that the proportion of single mothers receiving child support has remained so stagnant despite this massive infusion of government spending?
This paper shows that the overall trend in child support receipt rates actually hides dramatic improvements among certain subgroups of single mothers, most notably never-married mothers. Between 1976 and 1997, the proportion of never-married mothers who received child support increased fourfold. Another group of single mothers—divorced and separated mothers who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—also experienced a large increase in their child support receipt rates. Progress for these families has been masked by a shift in the marital status composition of single mothers away from divorced and separated mothers toward never-married mothers. Since never-married mothers have much lower rates of child support receipt than divorced and separated mothers, this shift has caused the overall trend in child support receipt rates to remain largely unchanged.
We also find that child support reforms and a strengthened child support enforcement program have led to significantly higher rates of child support receipt for single mothers once shifts in their marital status composition are taken into account. Specific child support enforcement tools have been more beneficial to certain subgroups of mothers than others. For example, we find that the in-hospital paternity establishment program has been particularly effective for never-married mothers not on AFDC, while immediate wage withholding has been particularly effective for divorced mothers on AFDC. In contrast, other state-level variables, such as the state unemployment rate, have had minimal impact.
The outline of the paper is as follows. In the second section, we describe the trends in child support receipt between 1976 and 1997. In the third section, we summarize prior research on the effects of child support policy on child support outcomes. The fourth section provides background information on the key actors involved in child support. The fifth section delineates our econometric model. The sixth section describes our data. The seventh section discusses our regression results. The final section summarizes our results.
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