In most states, child support paid on behalf of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants is used to offset TANF and child support administrative expenditures; this policy primarily benefits taxpayers. In contrast, Wisconsin allowed most custodial parents to keep all support...

There is little research on knowledge of the policy rules that could affect individuals, either in general or in evaluations of new programs. The lack of research is surprising, given that knowledge gaps could limit the effectiveness of reforms or lead to incorrect inferences regarding the...

Current debates about the success of TANF reforms have been obscured by the use of inconsistent indicators of success, as well as by measurement difficulties associated with alternative indicators. This paper considers conceptual and measurement issues associated with three different indicators...

The underlying theory behind child support guidelines implies that child support orders should change when the incomes of noncustodial parents change. This paper documents changes in noncustodial fathers' earnings over a five-year period and examines the relationship between the changes in...

This paper reviews family structure, its relationship to employment, and the recession’s impact on poor families. To reduce poverty, the report proposes policies that help parents balance work and caretaking, and support their children.

Research suggests that paternal re-partnering and new-partner fertility are associated with decreased nonresident father investments in children. Few studies, however, have examined the influence of maternal re-partnering and new-partner births on nonresident father investments. We use data from...

This paper reviews family structure, its relationship to employment, and the recession’s impact on poor families. To reduce poverty, the report proposes policies that help parents balance work and caretaking, and support their children.

<p>A large percentage of poor children live with just one parent, usually their mother, and single-parent families are more vulnerable to economic downturns than are two-parent families. Living arrangements also affect the optimal design of policies related to income support and child support. In...</p>

Despite efforts to strengthen child support enforcement over the past decades, the level of unpaid child support remains high. High child support arrears create problems for families and states; however, our understanding of how arrears accumulate is limited. Using longitudinal data from...