POLICY ISSUES AND CHILD SUPPORT PAYMENT BEHAVIOR: EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

Non-compliance with child support orders is separated into absent fathers who pay none of their obligation and those who make partial payments. This paper reports policy findings from an updated empirical study of those paying nothing. Such findings support better payment performance when the collection/ expenditure ratio is greater in a state's Child Support Enforcement Program. The paper argues that the customary approach, which combines partial payers and full payers of support, leads to misleading policy conclusions. It reports an empirical study breaking out the partial payer group and finds the impact of several policy variables to be reduced greatly for this group. Copyright 1990 Western Economic Association International.