TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bloom,David E.
AU  - Conrad,Cecilia
AU  - Miller,Cynthia
TI  - Child Support and Fathers' Remarriage and Fertility
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5781
PY  - 1996
Y2  - October 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5781
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5781.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David E. Bloom
Harvard School of Public Health
Department of Global Health and Population
665 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617/432-0866
Fax: 617/432-6733
E-Mail: dbloom@hsph.harvard.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 1997-05-01
AB  - This paper tests the hypothesis that child support obligations impede remarriage among nonresident fathers.  Hazard models fit to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and from the Survey of Income and Program Participation reveal that child support obligations deter remarriage among low-income nonresident fathers.  The benefits to children of stricter child support enforcement are thus diminished by the negative effects of child support on remarriage, as a substantial share of nonresident fathers remarry and help support women with children.  Indeed, simple calculations based on our findings suggest that the financial benefits to children in single-parent families of improved enforcement may be substantially or completely offset by the negative effects of enforcement that operate indirectly through diminished remarriage.  The results provide no evidence that child support influences the nature of matches in the remarriage market or the likelihood of subsequent fertility.
ER  -