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Journal Article A nonresident parent is a person 15 years or older who does not reside for most nights in the same household as one or more of his or her biological, adopted, or stepchildren under age 21. Research finds that many nonresident parents and their children are economically vulnerable, and government policies often have substantial impacts on their lives. This report reviews demographic, relationship, and economic characteristics of nonresident parents, with additional focus on the low-income subset of such parents. The report also presents data on nonresident parents’ child support payments.…
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Journal Article Mixed methods were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the Fathers Offering Children Unfailing Support (FOCUS) program. FOCUS is a diversion program which is designed to offer an alternative to incarceration for fathers who are noncompliant with child support payments. Quantitative data were collected through a pretest/posttest design (n = 55) and qualitative data were collected through telephone interviews with FOCUS instructors (n = 2) and community key stakeholders (n = 5) and focus groups with FOCUS participants (n = 76). FOCUS appears to be benefiting children by increasing their…
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Journal Article This article discusses experimental tests of two recent administrative interventions, the TANF 16 intervention and the statement intervention, designed to increase child support collections in Washington State. The TANF 16 intervention sought to reimburse the state for TANF benefits paid to custodial parents by intensively pursuing collections in arrears-only cases. The statement intervention tested whether sending regular billing statements to noncustodial parents who were new to the child support system increased compliance. While the TANF 16 intervention's effects represent a substantial…
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Journal Article This study examines the relationships among nonresident fathers' financial support, informal instrumental support, mothers' parenting and parenting stress, and their children's behavioral and cognitive development in single-mother families with low income. Informed by stress-coping and social support models, this study estimates the mediating effects of nonresident fathers' financial support on children's outcomes transmitted through mothers' parenting and parenting stress. The analyses use the longitudinal data from a subsample of 679 single mothers in the Fragile Families and Child…
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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…
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Journal Article This article uses information from a survey of 250 county child support agencies conducted in 1990 to describe how paternity establishment is organized and expedited in a nationally representative sample of localities. Findings indicate county paternity establishment rates are significantly associated with demographic characteristics of the counties. Rates were higher in counties that were spending more on child support cases, had lower average AFDC caseload per child support workers, transferred contested cases from a non-legal to a legal agency, and had a multiple consent process in which…
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Journal Article Over the past few decades, the federal government has intensified child support enforcement policies in response to high rates of child poverty and single-mother households. This study provides a comprehensive review of empirical, peer-reviewed articles from the past 20 years on the direct effects of child support enforcement policies on payments to custodial mothers and the indirect effects of these policies on behaviors such as fertility, sexual activity, welfare utilization, father involvement, and labor participation. The review indicates that child support enforcement has contributed to…
