Child support enforcement in the United States: Has policy made a difference?

Chien-Chung Huang and Ke-Qing Han

Children and Youth Services Review, 2012, vol. 34, issue 4, 622-627

Abstract: 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 20years 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 an increase in child support payments to custodial mothers. Additionally, strong enforcement is associated with low nonmarital fertility, risky sexual behavior, and welfare utilization and high father involvement. Policy implications are discussed.

Keywords: Child support enforcement; Child support payments; Poverty; Single mothers; Social policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019074091100449X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:34:y:2012:i:4:p:622-627

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.12.006

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().