Child Support Enforcement: Incentives and Well-Being

Public enforcement of private child support obligations transfers income from non-resident parents (mostly fathers) to resident parents (mostly mothers) or, if the mother is receiving welfare, to the state. Like any other transfer it changes the incentives as it changes the incomes of parents. Economic theory suggests that enforcement will decrease the labor supply of mothers who are not potential welfare recipients, increase the labor supply of mothers who are potential welfare recipients, increase the labor supply of fathers, decrease non-marital births, and increase or decrease divorce and remarriage of both parents. This paper reviews and synthesizes existing literature on these behavioral effects and presents new empirical evidence on the effects of stronger enforcement on the incomes of mothers and their children. We find that more stringent child support enforcement has increased child support payments and decreased welfare caseloads. Moreover, stronger enforcement increases the labor supply of mothers who would otherwise have been on welfare, increases slightly or has no effect on the labor supply of non-resident fathers, decreases divorce and non-marital births, and decreases remarriages of both mothers and fathers. Finally, our empirical estimates indicate that stronger child support enforcement increases the incomes of single mothers and their dependent children by two dollars for each dollar of child support received by single mothers. This implies that the dominant effect of additional child support is to encourage welfare participant women to leave the assistance roles and to increase their labor supply. This paper appears as Chapter 9 in the edited volume The Incentives of Government Programs and the Well-Beings of Families. To view the contents of the entire volume, please click here.