Brief
Low-skilled men, especially minorities, typically work at low levels and provide little support for their children. Conservatives blame this on government willingness to support families, which frees the fathers from responsibility, while liberals say that men are denied work by racial bias or the economy--either a lack of jobs or low wages, which depress the incentive to work. The evidence for all these theories is weak. Thus, changing program benefits or incentives is unlikely to solve the men's work problem. More promising is the idea of linking assistance with administrative requirements…
Child Support programs and courts across the country are connecting noncustodial parents to job services as an alternative to jail, which has achieved promising results. Job services are effectively helping parents find work, stay employed, pay child support, and avoid crime - at relatively little cost. This comparative infographic, "Jobs Not Jail", contrasts the impactful cost and benefit differences between the two. It displays how work-oriented services are successfully leveraging and achieving compliance from noncustodial parents who were once unemployed or underemployed. (Author abstract)
Part of a series of fact sheets that discuss how and why the child support program provides innovative services to families across six interrelated areas to assure that parents have the tools and resources they need to support their children and be positively involved in raising them, this fact sheet focuses on family-centered innovations to improve child support outcomes. The need for family-centered child support services is explained, child support program accomplishments are shared, and the evolving child support program policy agenda is described. The collaboration of the child support…
The nation's Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program is a federal/state/tribal/local partnership to promote family self-sufficiency and child well-being. In most states, approximately half of all child support orders are established and enforced by a federal and state financed child support enforcement entity known as the IV-D program (from Title IV-D of the Social Security Act). About one-third of all children in the United States will receive some assistance from CSE and approximately 58 percent of CSE cases involve never-married parents. Services are available to a parent with custody of a…
Other, Brief
This paper analyzes legislative proposals that address marriage, and the potential impact on current fatherhood programs serving low-income families. The initiation of fatherhood programs following the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act in 1996 is reviewed and current legislative proposals are described, including: the Child Support Distribution Act of 2001 and the Fathers Count Act of 1999, which combine child support reform measures with fatherhood provisions; the Strengthening Working Families Act, which contains child support distribution…
Brief
The federal government created the child support program in the 1970s to secure financial and medical support for children whose parents live separately. Today, the program collects $32 billion per year in child support payments and serves more than 16 million children and families. Still, about 35 percent of child support obligations go unpaid each month. Parents who do not pay often lack the ability to do so, due to unemployment, disability, incarceration, or other (sometimes multiple) barriers. These parents leave a significant amount of child support unpaid, and collecting that support…
Spending positive time with both parents promotes child well-being and is associated with better child support outcomes. Unmarried parents do not have systematic access to assistance in establishing parenting time orders, so stateand local child support programs have sought to address this service gap. This fact sheet highlights states and countiesthat coordinate the establishment of child support orders and parenting time agreements. Family violence safeguardsare always a critical component when addressing parenting time. (Author abstract)
OCSE recently launched Parenting Time Opportunities for Children, a pilot program to give child support agencies grants to develop, implement, and evaluate procedures to establish parenting time orders along with new child support orders. The goal is to learn more about how the child support program can safely and effectively give families opportunities to establish parenting time orders, thereby improving child well-being overall and related child support outcomes. This fact sheet introduces OCSE's Parenting Time Opportunities for Children grantees. (Author abstract)
Brief
New York's Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative is an innovative approach to helping low-income fathers find work and pay child support. Enacted in 2006, the initiative offered a state earned income tax credit and job-oriented programs to noncustodial parents. Our evaluation shows that the approach worked-the tax credit increased work and child support compliance among those with low child support orders and the job-oriented programs increased participants' earnings and child support payments. These positive results suggest that further investments in this approach are…
Brief
In 2006, New York became the first state to enact a new earned income tax credit for low-income parents who pay their child support in full. The credit is designed to keep parents from falling too deeply into poverty if they pay their child support in full and to encourage low-income noncustodial parents to work and pay their child support. During its first year, only 5,280 noncustodial parents received the tax credit, costing just over $2 million. This report identifies three reasons the take-up rate was so low and offers recommendations on how to increase participation in the future. (…
