TY  - JOUR
AU  - Freeman,Richard B.
AU  - Waldfogel,Jane
TI  - Dunning Delinquent Dads:  The Effects of Child Support Enforcement on Child Support Receipt by Never Married Women
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6664
PY  - 1998
Y2  - July 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6664
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6664.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Richard B. Freeman
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/868-3900
Fax: 617/868-2742
E-Mail: freeman@nber.org

Jane Waldfogel
Columbia University
School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY  10027
E-Mail: jw205@columbia.edu
AB  - Since the mid-1970s, the number of single-parent families has increased greatly in the U.S., contributing to the nation's child poverty problem.  In response, the federal government and various states have tried to increase child support payments from non-custodial parents.  Using data from administrative records and from the child support modules in the Survey of Income Program and Participation (SIPP) and the April and March Current Population Surveys (CPS), we find that the proportion of never married mothers receiving child support rose sharply in the 1980s and 1990s, with the largest increases in states where child support payment were particularly modest.  Using within-state variation over time to determine the effect of policy on child support payments, we estimate that increased government expenditures on child support policies are responsible for about one fifth of the upward trend.  Our results show that child support expenditures and tougher child support legislation policies work best in tandem.  States that both increased expenditures and adopted tougher laws experienced the largest increase in the proportion of never married mothers receiving support.
ER  -