Trade-offs implicit in child-support guidelines

David Betson, Eirik Evenhouse (), Siobhan Reilly () and Eugene Smolensky

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 1992, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Recent U.S. federal legislation required states to establish mandatory judicial guidelines for the setting of child-support awards. An equivalence-based approach is used to compare three formulae (two in use, one proposed) to three theoretical benchmarks, to clarify unavoidable trade-offs in the choice of a guideline.

Generally, the formulae in use leave children worse off economically than would the benchmark formulae. Since the economic well-being of children cannot be separated from that of their custodial parent, that which most privileges children's welfare will usually privilege the custodial parent over the absent parent, and what appears more fair between the two adults may be less favorable to the children. Another possible trade-off is between children's welfare and work incentives: The guidelines that prescribe larger awards are those with higher implied marginal tax rates. Despite their work disincentive effects, the formulae with higher marginal tax rates are more favorable to children's economic interests.

Date: 1992
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/3325129 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

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:wly:jpamgt:v:11:y:1992:i:1:p:1-20

DOI: 10.2307/3325129

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().