A Note on the Antipoverty Effectiveness of Child Support among Mother-Only Families

The Current Population Survey is used to examine the antipoverty effectiveness of child support, social insurance, and welfare among mother-only families in 1995. Child support brought about 6-7 percent of pretransfer poor mother-only families over the poverty line, an effect similar to that of social insurance and welfare. A brief trend analysis shows that child support's antipoverty effectiveness has been growing. Some potential reasons why child support's effect is still so small in the face of substantial changes in child support policy are hypothesized.