The Minimum Wage and Nonresident Fathers’ Provision of Material Support

• In Event: 3523 - Family Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 14: Family Structures

Abstract

A growing proportion of American families include a nonresident father, and children within these families are more likely to face economic hardship both in childhood and as they transition into adulthood. Policy efforts to address this disadvantage have largely focused on formal child support, but less than half of families entitled to such formal support receive payments and even fewer low-SES families receive such support. For nonresident fathers, their own economic deprivation means that child support debts may be impossible to repay, and punitive collection policies can put nonresident fathers at risk for penalties like license revocation and incarceration. Low SES men have faced diminished economic opportunity in response to the economic changes of the last several decades, including loss of low-skilled work and diminishing wages. In this paper, we consider whether minimum wage policies, which address the economic hardship faced by nonresident fathers and are tied to less punitive child support collection policies, are associated with greater receipt of child support for families with children living apart from their fathers. Using nationally representative data from the CPS, our findings indicate that among mothers due any support, each additional dollar in the level of the minimum wage was associated with just over a $170 increase in the annual amount of formal child support received. This finding stresses the importance of the broader economic context for the wellbeing of family systems with nonresident parents, and indicates that policies improving the economic wellbeing of parents can have important implications for children in low-SES parents.

Authors

• Daniel P. Miller, Boston University, School of Social Work

• Margaret M.C. Thomas, Boston University, School of Social Work

• Allison Dwyer Emory, University at Buffalo

• Lenna Nepomnyaschy, Rutgers University School of Social Work

• Maureen Waller, Cornell University