Judi Bartfeld

Child support and the postdivorce economic well-being of mothers, fathers, and children

This article provides national estimates of the current and potential impact of private child support transfers on the economic well-being of custodial and noncustodial families following marital dissolution. Mothers and children fare dramatically worse than fathers after marital dissolution; these differences, however, would be much more pronounced in the absence of private child support. Simulations of four existing child support guidelines show that substantial increases in economic well-being among mother-custody families are possible within the structure of the existing child support system, with minimal impact on poverty among nonresident fathers. Under all of these guidelines, however, custodial-mother families would continue to fare substantially worse than nonresident fathers.

Child Support Compliance among Discretionary and Nondiscretionary Obligors

This article documents patterns and correlates of child support compliance among fathers of welfare recipients in Wisconsin. We introduce the concept of discretionary obligors (because payment results in part from voluntary cooperation) and nondiscretionary obligors (because payment results from routine enforcement mechanisms) to differentiate between fathers with weak versus strong connections to formal employment, and we demonstrate that different factors underlie the compliance patterns of these groups.

Are There Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Nonmarital Child Support Cases

In this article, we examine the determinants of child support compliance in nonmarital child support cases in Wisconsin by focusing on the fathers ability to pay and the stringency of the child support enforcement system. We find that tougher enforcement rules positively affect compliance rates. Higher incomes are associated with higher compliance rates, and lower incomes, with lower rates. The percentage of income that is owed in child support also has an effect on compliance. Orders that represent a high percentage of income relative to existing guidelines are associated with lower compliance rates. However, owing a low percentage of income only has an effect on compliance for fathers with very low incomes; for these fathers, obligating them to pay low amounts of support positively affects compliance. These results suggest that a fathers ability to pay, in addition to his willingness to pay, determines the extent to which he fulfills his child support obligation. We conclude that to increase child support collections, both the earning power of noncustodial parents and the stringency of the enforcement system should be increased.

Patterns of Child Support Compliance in Wisconsin.

This article examines 5-year compliance patterns among Wisconsin child support cases that came to court in 1986-1988. We find only limited support for the common assumption that compliance with child support orders declines over time. The average percentage paid is about .65 during each of the first 5 years following divorce or the establishment of paternity. One trend is an increasing polarization into groups of nonpayers and full payers. Although we find considerable stability from year to year among nonpayers (79% of nonpayers in one year do not pay in the following year) and full payers (84% of those who pay in full one year also pay in full the next), there is considerable change over the course of 5 years. Compliance during the first year provides some indication of long-term compliance, but about half of fathers change their compliance rate over the period. We find important differences between divorced and unmarried fathers, differences that are more pronounced than is apparent from a single year of data. Key Words: child support, compliance, single-parent families. Children living in single-parent families are economically vulnerable, with about half of such children living in poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). This economic insecurity and the increasing numbers of such children have triggered considerable interest in the effectiveness of the child support system. Researchers and policymakers widely acknowledge that low compliance with existing child support obligations is problematic. Nationally, approximately one half of resident parents with child support orders received the full amount due in 1991, one fourth received partial payments, and one fourth received nothing (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1995). Low annual compliance also has been documented in a variety of local and state studies (e.g., Bartfeld & Meyer, 1994; Meyer & Bartfeld, 1996; Peters, Argys, Maccoby, & Mnookin, 1993). Accordingly, numerous policy initiatives over the past two decades have attempted to increase rates of compliance. Such initiatives include intercepting income tax refunds of noncomplying, nonresident parents; placing liens on the property of delinquent obligors; and routinely withholding child support from the wages of parents with support orders. The most recent initiatives were part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act of 1996, which requires states to have legislation in place to rescind drivers licenses and professional licenses when nonresident parents become delinquent in their payments. Despite the consensus that child support compliance is inadequate, existing knowledge about long-term compliance is surprisingly limited. We know little about how aggregate compliance rates change between the early and later years of an order, and more important, we know little about how compliance changes from year to year at the individual level or how annual compliance compares with compliance over the longer term. Such information is critical both in defining the problem of low child support compliance and in designing appropriate interventions. This article begins to fill these gaps by presenting data on aggregate and micro-level patterns of compliance among divorced and unmarried fathers who have child support orders in Wisconsin. THEORY AND LITERATURE REVIEW Theoretical models of child support compliance typically posit that compliance is affected by the nonresident parents ability to pay, by the economic needs of the resident parent, by the strength of the ties between the nonresident parent and his or her ex-partner and children, and by the stringency of the enforcement system. These models have been substantiated to varying degrees by empirical work examining the extent to which nonresident fathers comply with child support orders at a particular point in time. (See, for example, Meyer & Bartfeld, 1996; Peters et al., 1993. …

Participation in the School Breakfast Program: New Evidence from the ECLS-K

This article examines determinants of participation in the federal School Breakfast Program among third-grade public school students. Data come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study—Kindergarten Cohort. Results suggest that participation is much less common in the School Breakfast Program than in the National School Lunch Program, even among children whose schools offer both programs. Economic vulnerability, time constraints, and local norms are found to be linked to participation; program and logistical aspects, such as whether schools serve breakfast in the classroom and the length of time available for breakfast, are predictive. Results suggest that participation in the School Breakfast Program could be increased by adjusting program characteristics and by enhancing outreach efforts.