Brief
In fiscal year 2018, noncustodial parents were obligated to pay nearly $33.6 billion in current child support on behalf of the 15 million children served by the Title IV-D child support program. One-third of that, or $11 billion, was not collected. Unemployment is the leading reason for non-payment of child support by noncustodial parents. This brief will explore the opportunities at the state and federal levels to provide employment services to noncustodial parents and increase child support payments in the process.
red dot icon
Journal Article Young, minority, and poorly educated fathers in fragile families have little capacity to support their children financially and are hard-pressed to maintain stability in raising those children. In this article, Robert Lerman examines the capabilities and contributions of unwed fathers, how their capabilities and contributions fall short of those of married fathers, how those capabilities and contributions differ by the kind of relationship the fathers have with their child's mother, and how they change as infants grow into toddlers and kindergartners.Unwed fathers' employment and earnings…
red dot icon
Journal Article This article provides the first individual-level estimates of the change over time in the probability of nonresidence for initially resident fathers in the United States. Drawing on the 1968-1997 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we used discrete-time event history models to compute the probabilities of nonresidence for six 5-year periods. Our sample consists of men (N = 1,388) who are coresident with their biological children at the time of birth. We found that the observed probability of nonresidence doubled over the three decades of the study period, but not linearly. The risk…
Training Materials, Book
The Money Habitudes Professionals Guide is designed for those working with Money Habitudes cards and covering money-related issues. Easy to understand and broadly applicable, the guide helps counselors, educators, therapists, financial practitioners and coaches when working with individuals, couples or groups. It provides plans for short icebreakers and longer standalone activities (15 minutes to 2 hours) as well as suggestions for using Money Habitudes cards with other programs: pre-marital, marriage enrichment, couples counseling, communication, conflict management, and life skills, as well…
Training Materials, Book
The Money Habitudes Teen Guide is designed for those using Money Habitudes for Teens and covering money-related issues. The cards help teens discover the hidden messages that motivate the way they make money decisions. The guide provides educators, youth leaders and counselors five lesson plans which can each be used as five stand-alone lesson plans or combined for a more in-depth program of five classes or a half-day program. They can be used in-conjunction with programs in financial literacy, life skills, psychology or business to help teens develop a healthier relationship with money.…
Training Materials, Other
The Money Habitudes Workshop/Training DVD is designed to be used with Money Habitudes cards. It may be used to educate those using the cards, as a tool to help train-the-trainer, or as an interactive component in workshops or meetings. The DVD is also a useful way for individuals and couples to learn about their own Money Habitudes and understand how they can support or sabotage achieving their life and financial goals. The 26-minute DVD is divided into four sections: Introduction and overview to how we develop our habits and attitudes about money (12 minutes); How to use the cards (4 minutes…
Training Materials, Book
The Money Habitudes workbook is designed to be used with Money Habitudes cards and the Money Habitudes Training DVD. Its exercises help people discover how habits and attitudes about money support or sabotage their life, relationship, career and financial goals. The guide can be used in the context of a group training or can be used by individuals and couples working on their own. The workbook walks people through the steps to sort and interpret the Money Habitudes cards; provides space to record results and interpretations; includes tables relating Habitudes to typical financial and life…
Brief
This inaugural issue of Focus on Policy summarizes recent research on the ways in which the American family has changed over the past half century. Changes include how couples form partnerships, have children, earn a living, and struggle to get by. (Author abstract)
red dot icon
Journal Article Marriage between two parents, compared with other family living arrangements, appears, on average, to enhance children's wellbeing and development. Some of the positive association between marriage and children's wellbeing comes from positive associations between marriage and other things that also contribute to children's wellbeing. David Ribar first sets up a standard economic rational-choice model to show that, all else equal, marriage should produce advantages that can improve children’s wellbeing, such as better coordination between parents and economies of scale that make limited…
red dot icon
Journal Article Substantial declines in employment and earnings among disadvantaged men may be exacerbated by child support enforcement policies that are designed to help support families but may have the unintended consequence of discouraging fathers' employment. Disentangling causal effects is challenging because high child support debt may be both a cause and a consequence of unemployment and low child support order compliance. We used childbirth costs charged in unmarried mothers' Medicaid-covered childbirths, from Wisconsin administrative records, as an exogenous source of variation to identify the…
