If the government offered a refundable tax credit for children, national health insurance, and an assured child support benefit to all families with children - poor families as well as nonpoor families - what would happen to poverty, welfare dependency, and other related issues? The authors...

Much previous research has focused on the length of welfare spells and returns to welfare following an exit. Few quantitative studies have looked at broader indicators of the economic well-being of those who have exited AFDC. In this paper we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of...

Many children born to mothers who are not married are very poor, and in many instances their mothers do not receive child support. Some excuse this by asserting that the fathers of these children do not and never will earn enough to pay adequate support. But the records of paternity cases that...

This paper examines five-year compliance patterns among Wisconsin child support cases that came to court in 1986–88. We find only limited support for the common assumption that compliance with child support orders declines over time: the average percent paid is about .65 during each of the...

This paper documents the changing role of child support as an income source to never-married mothers during the 1990s. Data are drawn from multiple panels of the Current Population Survey. We find that child support receipt has increased among successive cohorts of never-married mothers, and...

The child support system has been increasing its efforts to make health insurance a part of child support awards. Data from the 1990 Current Population Survey Child Support Supplement show that 40 percent of child support awards require that the noncustodial parent provide health insurance to...

This paper examines compliance with child support orders by divorced fathers in Wisconsin. Compliance increases as the income of the father increases, although it falls in the highest income category. The "burden" of awards does not affect compliance unless more than 30 percent of income is...