The Effect of Routine Income Withholding on Child Support Collections

Recent federal legislation requires states to make substantial improvements in paternity establishment, enact numeric child support standards for determining child support awards, update those awards at least every three years, and adopt routine income withholding of all child support obligations. Data gathered for the purpose of evaluating the Wisconsin Child Support Assurance System make it possible to examine the effects of routine income withholding on the size and regularity of child support payments. Data on child support obligations and payments and the use of income withholding were collected from the court records of 6400 child support cases which entered the court system between 1980 and 1986 in the 10 pilot and 10 matched control counties. Because the control counties began to use routine income withholding in a large number of cases, the cross-county, before-after comparison understates the true effect of income withholding. On the other hand, because income withholding cannot be implemented in some cases in which payment is unlikely, and because we can control for such selectivity only imperfectly, a comparison of child support payments of those with and without income withholding orders is likely to overstate the true effect of routine withholding. The former comparison suggests routine income withholding increases child support payments by 11 percent whereas the latter suggests an increase of 30 percent. Relative to gains achieved by most program interventions, this one is quite substantial. Relative to the difference between current child support payments and estimated ability to pay child support--which implies potential gains of close to 400 percent--the gain is trivial. Attention should now be turned toward evaluating the independent and interactive effects of other reforms such as increased paternity establishment, numeric child support standards, and regular updating of awards on child support payments. THE EFFECT OF ROUTINE INCOME WITHHOLDING ON CHILD SUPPORT COLLECTIONS