Deadbeat Dads

Shannon Seitz, Geoffrey Sanzenbacher, Andrew Beauchamp and Meghan Skira
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Shannon Seitz: Boston College

No 435, 2014 Meeting Papers from Society for Economic Dynamics

Abstract: Why do some men father children outside of marriage but not provide support? Why are single women willing to have children outside of marriage when they receive little or no support from unmarried fathers? To answer these questions, we develop and estimate a dynamic equilibrium model of marriage, employment, fertility, and child support. We consider the extent to which two explanations account for the prevalence of 'deadbeat dads' and non-marital childbearing: low wages and a shortage of single men relative to single women. Even if women prefer to have children within marriage, when faced with a shortage of high wage spouses it may be optimal to have children with low wage men outside of marriage. In response, some men have incentives to have children and not support them. The model is estimated by efficient method of moments using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. We conduct several counterfactual experiments including equating black and white population supplies and eliminating the racial gap in wages to explore the implications of the model. We also analyze a counterfactual policy in which child support enforcement is perfect.

Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Deadbeat Dads (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:red:sed014:435

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