To What Extent Do Children Benefit from Child Support?

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.

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

Contents

Introduction
A National Profile of Children with and without a Parent Living Elsewhere
Children's Involvement with Their Parents Who Live Elsewhere
How Relevant Is Child Support As an Income Source for Children?  Are Poor Children Who Receive Child Support Different from Those Who Do Not?
Does Child Support Reduce (or Increase) Child Poverty and Income Inequality?
Conclusions
Notes
References
About the Authors

Introduction

Approximately one out of every three children in the United States live apart from at least one of their parents, representing 23 million children in 1997. Although all of these children could have a child support order and receive the full amount that is owed, only about one in five do. Poverty rates among these children are more than three times as high as those for children who live with both of their natural parents.

Given the magnitude of parent absence, the lack of child support payments, and the strong association between parent absence and poverty, it is not surprising that the federal government and states have made child support enforcement a priority during the past 25 years. In 1975, Congress created an open-ended entitlement to child support enforcement services by enacting Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. This legislation established a federal/state partnership to enforce child support. Since then, Congress has adopted numerous laws to strengthen child support enforcement tools available to the states; most notable are the 1984 Child Support Enforcement Amendments and the 1988 Family Support Act.

More recently, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 changed welfare law to help families become less dependent on welfare and move them toward self-sufficiency, in part by improving child support collections. In particular, the law replaced the open-ended entitlement program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a block grant to the states to administer a new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). It gave states considerable flexibility in designing their TANF programs, including flexibility regarding the treatment of child support. It also beefed up child support enforcement, in part by requiring the federal government and states to create national and state directories of new employee hires and by requiring states to establish centralized collections and disbursement units, all of which are expected to increase child support payments.

This policy brief examines the magnitude of parental absence and the extent to which nonresident parents contribute financially and emotionally to their children living elsewhere using data from the 1997 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF)— a large nationally representative household survey. Specifically, it answers the following questions:

• How do children who have a parent living elsewhere differ from other children?
• How likely are children who have a parent living elsewhere to receive financial and emotional support from that nonresident parent?
• To what extent do children's families depend upon child support income?
• In what ways are poor children who receive child support different from poor children who do not receive it?
• Does child support reduce (or increase) child poverty and income inequality?

The National Survey of America's Families is part of the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project. Detailed data were collected in 1997 from nearly 45,000 nationally representative households. While all 50 states and the District of Columbia are represented in the survey, 13 focal states were chosen in order to provide us with case studies of the effects of policies in those states. Special effort was made to gain a particularly in-depth perspective of low-income families with children. Households were asked questions about housing, family structure, employment, income security, health, education, and child well-being. One section focuses entirely on children's interaction with noncustodial parents.

Our basic finding is that child support is highly relevant to children who receive it, especially poor children not on cash assistance. The problem is, however, that most poor children eligible for child support do not receive it. In 1996, only 29 percent of poor children who had a parent living elsewhere lived in families that received child support.

See the PDF for complete report.

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

Usage, posting and reprint of materials on the UI web site:

Most publications may be downloaded free of charge from the web site in PDF format. This information may be used and copies made for research, academic, policy or other non-commercial purposes. Proper attribution is required.

Copyright of the written materials contained within the Urban Institute website is owned or controlled by the Urban Institute. Posting UI research papers on other websites is permitted subject to prior approval from the Urban Institute—contact paffairs@urban.org.

If you are unable to access or print the PDF document please contact us or call the Publications Office at (202) 261-5687.