Child Support: Running Hard to Stay in the Same Place; New Study Published in 'Demography'

2/20/2003

From: Anne C. Case, 609-258-2177 or accase@princeton.edu; Sara McLanahan, 609-258-4875 or mclanaha@princeton.edu both of Princeton University

PRINCETON, NJ, Feb. 20 -- In the late 1970s, less than a third of all children eligible to receive child support payments from an absent parent actually got them. Two decades later, after several major federal laws and numerous state laws and policies aimed at enforcing child support, the percentage of eligible children receiving child support was still stuck at less than a third. Evidence of the futility of a major social policy?

Not so, argue Anne Case and Sara McLanahan of Princeton University and I-Fen Lin of Bowling Green State University, in a new study published in this month's issue of the journal Demography. Case and her colleagues show that powerful social and economic trends were at work to make child support less likely. National and state policies have probably prevented an actual decline in the proportion of eligible children receiving child support payments. Policies such as legislative guidelines for the size of awards, genetic testing to establish paternity, and withholding payments from the earnings of all nonresident parents (not just in cases where the resident parent is on welfare), have been effective in raising child support payments.

The trends working against child support included widespread adoption of unilateral divorce laws. These allow either spouse to get a divorce without the other's agreement, thereby reducing the bargaining power of mothers whose husbands were leaving. Also, increasing proportions of single mothers had never been married; the never-married are less likely than divorced parents to get support orders for their children, and the amounts paid are smaller. Women's earnings relative to men have increased for much of the period, and young unmarried fathers with little education have done poorly in the job market. Both of these economic trends reduce the chances that men would make substantial child support payments. The number of children potentially eligible for child support has grown markedly in recent decades. In the 1950s, most children lived with both biological parents from birth to adulthood; today, over half of all children are expected to live apart from one parent, usually the father, at some point before reaching age 18.

Policies affected women and children differently, depending on their circumstances. Legislative guidelines for the amount of awards, for example, benefited mainly the women who had been married; those who had never been married to the child's father were less likely to get an award in the first place and thus were less affected by the guidelines. Genetic testing for paternity has raised the probability of child support awards for the never-married. States are now required to establish paternity for all children born outside marriage.

Unilateral divorce laws, enacted mainly during the 1970s, cost divorced mothers an average of $300 (in 1982 dollars) in lost child-support income each year on average. Especially during the 1970s and 1980s, inflation ate into the value of child support awards, which are not typically indexed to the value of the dollar. Even for the minority of eligible children who benefit from child support payments, the amounts are still modest, averaging $2,600 per household per year in 1997.

The study used data from annual interviews with women who were single heads of household during the years 1968 to 1997. These women were part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which included members of 5,000 U.S. households first sampled in 1968, and their children. The researchers tested the effects of state-level policies on women in different circumstances by analyzing changes in child support before and after policy changes were introduced in each state.

The research was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Demography is the peer-reviewed journal published by the Population Association of America. The full article, "Explaining Trends in Child Support: Economic, Demographic, and Policy Effects," is available on www.prb.org/cpipr. Username: cpipr; password: demography. Or call the Center for Public Information on Population Research, 202-939-5414. The Center, a project of the Population Reference Bureau, is funded by the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.