Poster #53 - Geographic Variation in Child Support Debt: The Role of Neighborhood Contexts and Mobility

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

In 2023, the U.S. child support system managed more than 12 million cases, with accumulated unpaid child support (arrears) estimated to exceed $100 billion (The Administration for Children and Families, 2024). Accumulation of arrears is a persistent challenge for noncustodial parents as it can grow rapidly and remain difficult to repay, particularly when orders exceed the payer’s capacity (Meyer, Ha, and Hu, 2008; Hodges, Meyer, and Cancian, 2020). Despite extensive research on individual predictors of arrears, little is known about how geographic context and mobility shape these outcomes. Prior scholarship has shown that neighborhood and regional conditions influence intergenerational mobility, welfare participation, and material hardship (Chetty & Hendren, 2018; Chyn & Katz, 2021; Casciano & Massey, 2008), suggesting that arrears could also vary systematically across place. Likewise, mobility is often associated with changes in economic circumstances and may be associated with arrears.

This study, part of a broader project examining the influence of neighborhoods on child support outcomes, utilizes individual-level linked administrative data from the Wisconsin Administrative Data Core (WADC) to investigate the extent to which arrears are associated with neighborhood characteristics and mobility among noncustodial fathers in Wisconsin. The analysis focuses on a cohort of fathers with a nonmarital birth in 2015 and a child support order in place at any point through 2021,  tracking their earnings, payments, residential address, and arrears balances over the first year following order establishment. I specifically restrict to noncustodial fathers with only one active order and no arrears at baseline.  I link each father’s zip code during the first year post-order establishment to data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and the National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA), to incorporate measures of local poverty rates, rurality, economic infrastructure, and environmental characteristics over time. To examine the geographic variation of child support arrears, I estimate a series of regression models to assess the relationship between neighborhood (zip code) characteristics, mobility, and the change in child support arrears balances over the first year, focusing on neighborhood characteristics, mobility, as well as individual factors traditionally linked to child support outcomes. I also stratify models by race and ethnicity to examine how these relationships differ across subgroups.

Preliminary results show that more frequent mobility in the short term is associated with higher arrears accumulation. Some neighborhood characteristics also mattered: residing in rural areas was linked to slower growth in arrears relative to more urban areas.  Fathers with no earnings and with high order-to-earnings ratios accrued the most arrears, and arrears growth was higher among Black fathers.  This research aims to shed new light on the interplay between child support policy and practice and place-based policies and characteristics. 

Author

• Alison Lynn Berube, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Presenting Author