Child Support in the United States : An Uncertain and Irregular Income Source ?

In all developed countries, single-parent families are particularly vulnerable to poverty. In contrast to many European countries that provide some guaranteed income support for children, the United States has emphasized private responsibility, increasingly requiring child support from the other parent. The reliance on a private approach raises several questions concerning the adequacy and distribution of child support. Using detailed administrative records for virtually all mothers with new child support orders in one U.S. state in 2000, we analyze child support receipts over the subsequent three years. We find that most mothers with child support orders receive support, and many receive substantial amounts. However, the amount received varies substantially from year to year. Moreover, we find substantial instability within years—a characteristic of private support that has been difficult to measure with prior data. Our analysis of child support outcomes across the income distribution shows remarkably similar proportions of families receiving at least some support. Considering amounts received over the distribution of pre-child-support income, we find a U-shaped pattern, with amounts declining slightly with income over the first three deciles, and then increasing steadily. Lower-income families are also less likely to receive regular child support. Nonetheless, child support plays an important role in the income packages of many low-income families, reducing pre-child-support poverty rates by 16 percent and closing the poverty gap by an average of 44 percent in 2001. Child Support in the U.S.: An Uncertain and Irregular Income Source? Dramatic changes in the living situations of children have recast the role of child support. With about half of all children in the U.S. living apart from at least one parent for some time before they turn sixteen (Bumpass and Lu, 2000), child support is a potentially important income source for a broad set of families. Although rates of single parenthood vary across developed countries, in almost every country they have increased dramatically in the last 30 years (Corden and Meyer, 2000). The proportion of children who live in single-parent families at a particular point in time is now above 10 percent in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, and Sweden, and above 20 percent in the United Kingdom and the United States (Rainwater and Smeeding, 2003). In all developed countries, single-parent families are particularly vulnerable to poverty. Countries have developed different policy responses. Similar to its approach on other issues, the United States has focused on private responsibility, increasingly requiring child support from the other parent. Many European countries also require child support (maintenance). However, in contrast to the United States they generally also focus on public responsibility, the government guaranteeing a certain level of support that is paid regularly, regardless of what is paid privately. This paper focuses on the role of child support in the United States. The reliance on a private approach raises several questions. We first consider the level of support, asking: What is the contribution of child support to the income packages of mothers and their children? Because a public system could provide extra support to low-income families, but a private system provides only what noncustodial parents (who may themselves have low income) provides, we also consider distributional issues: Is child support primarily helping those already better off? Does private child support remove many families from For a discussion of child support policies in the United States and European countries, see Corden and Meyer (2000) and Kahn and Kamerman (1988). For further information on guaranteed child support schemes, also see Garfinkel (1992) and Garfinkel, McLanahan, and Robins (1992). For a discussion of whether mothers and fathers have similar characteristics, and thus the extent to which one would expect low-income mothers to be associated with low-income fathers, see, for example Miller, Garfinkel, and McLanahan (1997).