Explaining Child Support Trends: Economic, Demographic, and Policy Effects

Child Support is an important source of income for single mothers and their children. Given the growth in single mother families and given their high rates of poverty, child support payments are of growing interest to social scientists and demographers that care about inequality and child wellbeing. This paper uses data from the PSID to examine trends in child support payments between 1968 and 1997 and the determinants of trends. The findings suggest that a number of forces exerted downward pressure on child support payments during this period, with inflation and the shift to unilateral divorce being more important during the earlier years, and changes in marital status and declines in male earnings being more important during the later years. Three new child support laws offset these negative effects: numeric guidelines, universal withholding, and genetic testing.