This document attempts to remove a bit of the mystery around helping parents with child support modifications. Written with the presumption that the father is the noncustodial parent who is paying child support, this same information can be applied to all noncustodial parents whether they are fathers or mothers. (Author abstract)
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Journal Article Stricter child support enforcement may reduce unwed childbearing by raising the costs of fatherhood. The authors investigate this hypothesis using a sample of young women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, to which they add information on state child support enforcement. Models of the probability of a teenage premarital birth and of teenage premarital pregnancy and pregnancy resolution provide tentative evidence that during the early 1980s, teens living in states with higher rates of paternity establishment were less likely to become unwed mothers. This relationship is stronger…
Increases in single-parent households, often involving never married couples, have heightened the urgency to understand decisions parents make about parent-child relationships after separation. This qualitative study provides a descriptive analysis of the concerns of mothers in non-marital relationships that may affect their decisions regarding visitation and clarifies the relationship between visitation and paying child support. Weighing the benefits versus the costs, most mothers were willing to allow visitation even if the father did not pay child support, recognizing the importance of…
In this paper, we document the continuing decline in employment and labor force participation of black men between the ages of 16 and 34 who have a high school education or less. We explore the extent to which these trends can be accounted for in recent years by two fairly new developments: (1) the dramatic growth in the number of young black men who have been incarcerated and (2) strengthened enforcement of child support policies. We use micro-level data from the Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Groups, along with state-level data over time on incarceration rates and child…