Child support and non-resident fathers’ contact with their children

The paper presents a theoretical model of a non-resident father’s child support and contact with his child, which combines the public good treatment of child-expenditure with “trade” in father-child contact-time. The model provides predictions concerning the effects of father’s income and binding child support orders on contact. Using new data from the British Household Panel Survey on frequency of contact of non-resident fathers with their dependent children, there is evidence that, among middle-income fathers, higher father’s income increases contact with his children. In the context of the theory, this suggests that setting a higher binding child support order would reduce father’s contact for these fathers.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)