Impacts of Child Support Policies and Payments on Wellbeing of Children and Parents

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Child support policy is intended to ensure parents provide economic support to their children even when living apart. Because child support involves transfers between households, it necessarily involves tradeoffs among the financial needs and wellbeing of mothers, fathers and children. Policies to establish and enforce child support have, therefore, sought to balance formula-based orders with more flexible approaches to setting support, and carrots and sticks with regard to enforcement. Furthermore, while the federal government sets the parameters for many aspects of child support policy, states have substantial discretion in the specifics. The role of both federal and state policy means there are numerous leverage points where policy-relevant research can play a role.

This panel includes four papers that collectively explore the short-term and long-term implications of state child support policy choices and actual child support payments for the economic (and broader) well-being of parents and children. The first two papers focus on child support policy. One such policy is the ability to suspend drivers’ licenses for child support obligors with unpaid support. Using administrative data from Wisconsin, Bartfeld and colleagues examine the prevalence of drivers’ license suspensions among nonmarital fathers over the first 8 years after their initial child support order, as well as the downstream impact of suspensions on employment and earnings associated with driving with a suspended license. Looking more broadly at enforcement strategies using the PSID, and leveraging state differences in the timing of a range of child support enforcement laws, Hewitt estimates the impact of stricter child support enforcement during childhood on the amount of child support receipt as well as how that support in turn impacts longer-run outcomes including education, pregnancy, and marriage. Turning to the role of child support in the context of different placement arrangements, Chanda and colleagues link data on divorcing parents in Wisconsin with credit data to explore how children’s post-divorce living arrangements are associated with parents’ subsequent debt, and the role of child support in mediating this relationship. Finally, Nepomnyaschy uses longitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study to explore the relationship between unmarried fathers’ involuntary (formal child support) and voluntary (time, informal support, inkind support) engagement with children from age 5-15 and a variety of measures of those children’s economic well-being as young adults. Collectively, these papers provide new insight on intended and unintended impacts of child support and child support enforcement, and the importance of conceptualizing child support as more than simply a way of maximizing resources to resident parents and children.

Policy Area

• Family and Child Policy

Chair

• Laura Cuesta, Rutgers University

Discussant

• Daniel P. Miller, Boston University

Individual Presentations

• Driver’s License Suspensions among Child Support Involved Fathers: Prevalence, Patterns, and Implications for Employment and Earnings - Non-Presenting Co-Author: Judith Bartfeld, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Megan Doherty Bea, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Presenting Author: Alison Lynn Berube, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Jungjin Koo, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Children’s Living Arrangements and Parental Debt after Divorce - Presenting Author: Trisha Chanda, The Ohio State University

• Nonresident Fathers and Young Adults' Economic Well-Being - Presenting Author: Lenna Nepomnyaschy, Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Organizer

• Judith Bartfeld, University of Wisconsin-Madison