Child Support Transfers under Family Complexity

When parents engage in childbearing with more than one partner or multi-partnered fertility, this gives rise to a complex family system with strong implications for transfers to children. This study therefore seeks to measure the effect of multi-partnered fertility on formal and informal child support transfers, specifically to non-marital children. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), the study goes beyond previous works by attempting to isolate causal effects of male and female multi-partnered fertility. I find that in general, the probability of receiving formal and/or informal child support contributions decline as the number of children a parent has with more than one partner rises. The study confirms a causal adverse effect of male multi-partnered fertility on receiving any child support payments. These findings underscore the need to revisit child support policies for complex families.