The impact of child support enforcement policy on nonmarital childbearing

Abstract

The interaction of welfare and child support regulations has created a situation in which child support policy's incentives that discourage unwed fatherhood tend to be stronger than its incentives that encourage unwed motherhood. This suggests that more stringent child support enforcement creates incentives that reduce the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing, particularly among women with a significant chance of needing public assistance in the event of a nonmarital birth and their male partners. We investigate this hypothesis with a sample of women from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to which we add information on state child support enforcement. We examine childbearing behavior between the ages of 15 and 44 before marriage and during periods of non-marriage following divorce or widowhood. The estimates indicate that women living in states with more effective child support enforcement are less likely to bear children when unmarried, especially if they are young, never-married, or black. The findings suggest that improved child support enforcement may be a potent intervention for reducing nonmarital childbearing. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

The Evolution of Family Complexity from the Perspective of Nonmarital Children

“…However, paying support to a previous partner is associated with a decreased risk of new parenting partnerships. Fathers in this situation may be more aware of the financial consequences of additional children and therefore may be less likely to partner with another woman; this would be consistent with some other research suggesting that father's fertility is sensitive to child support enforcement (Aizer and McLanahan 2006;Garfinkel et al 2003;Plotnick et al 2004Plotnick et al , 2007. An alternative possibility is that, all else equal, fathers who pay support to their most recent partner (focal child's mother) may be more attractive partners to other women, increasing the risk of a new birth and a new half-sibling for the child.…”

Child support enforcement policy and unmarried fathers' employment in the underground and regular economies

“…There is ample evidence of the positive effects of stronger child support enforcement, including increases in child support receipt among never-married mothers (Freeman & Waldfogel, 2001;Sorensen & Oliver, 2002), increased incomes of single mothers and their children (Heintz, Huang, & Garfinkel, 2000), declines in nonmarital fertility (Case, 1998;Garfinkel, Huang, McLanahan, & Gaylin, 2003;Plotnick, Garfinkel, McLanahan, & Ku, 2007), and declines in welfare caseloads (Huang, Kunz, & Garfinkel, 2002;Huang, Garfinkel, & Waldfogel, 2004). There is also some evidence that child support enforcement may have negative effects on nonresident fathers, including increases in poverty rates (Nichols-Casebolt, 1986;Meyer, 1998), reductions in remarriage rates (Bloom, Conrad, & Miller, 1998), and increases in underground work (Waller & Plotnick, 2001).…”

State Welfare Policies and Children’s Living Arrangements

“…In addition, paternity establishment policies may increase marriage or cohabitation, as such policies also increase the father's costs of maintaining a separate household and paying child support. Some research finds that child support and paternity establishment policies are associated with declines in rates of nonmarital childbearing (Garfinkel et al 1998;Plotnick et al 2001;Peters et al 2004) and divorce (Nixon 1997).…”