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…
New York state implemented a pilot employment program from 2006 to 2009 for parents behind in their child support. These pilot programs, part of the Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative, provided employment-oriented services, fatherhood/parenting workshops, case management, and other support services to nearly 4,000 parents behind in their child support in four New York communities. Our evaluation shows that these programs successfully helped participants find work, increase their earnings, and pay more child support. These gains continued for at least a year after…
Brief
New York launched a pilot employment program to help parents behind in their child support in four communities between 2006 and 2009. The program was part of the state's Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative. Our evaluation found that the program's combination of employment assistance, case management, and other support services substantially increased the earnings and child support payments of disadvantaged parents who were not meeting their child support obligations.
The first evaluation report of OCSE's Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED) documents CSPED's planning year and first year of implementation, offering insights into recruitment, engagement, collaborative partnerships, and service delivery strategies for anyone thinking about or actually implementing employment programs for noncustodial parents who are unable to pay their child support. (Author abstract modified)
New York conducted a three-year pilot project (2006-2009) in five locations to help unemployed parents without custody of their children find work called the Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative. This report describes the implementation of this initiative and discusses challenges encountered and lessons learned. While all programs used a case management model to deliver employment and supportive services, the intensity of those services, the linkages to the child support program, the recruitment strategies, and the organizational structure of the programs varied. Despite…
Men are increasingly receiving custody of their children, and single-father families with children are growing at a faster rate than even single-mother families. However, many observers still believe that custodial fathers are small in number. Indeed, there are a number of myths concerning custodial fathers, myths that are dispelled by empirical data. The authors examine data from the Current Population Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and Wisconsin court records, and determine that many assumptions about custodial fathers are simply not true. Many child support…
Other
In 2006, New York became the first state in the country to enact legislation that consists of two innovative policies that are designed to help low-income noncustodial parents (mostly fathers) find work and pay the full amount of their current child support called the Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative. This report describes this initiative and gives detailed information about the five pilot sites that are providing employment services to low-income noncustodial parents in the following New York communities: Buffalo, Jamestown, New York City and Syracuse. It is the…
The Urban Institute is evaluating the implementation of six Community-Centered Responsible Fatherhood Ex-Prisoner Reentry Pilot Projects funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The projects provide soon-to-be and recently released fathers and their families with an array of responsible parenting, healthy relationship, and economic stability services to help stabilize the fathers and their families. Services offered include parenting and relationship classes, financial literacy workshops, domestic violence services, support groups, family activity days, and case management…
Brief
Many programs for low-income fathers involve partnerships with multiple agencies to help recruit and serve more fathers, offer a broader array of services, and even gain access to new funding streams. In this brief, we summarize findings from the Strengthening Families Evidence Review (SFER) on forming and maintaining such partnerships. The SFER, a systematic review of family-strengthening programs serving low-income fathers or couples, was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research under contract to the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and…
In 2006, New York instituted a noncustodial parent earned income tax credit (NCP EITC) to encourage low-income noncustodial parents to work and pay child support. This study examines the credit's impacts through 2009. We use a regression discontinuity approach exploiting a drop in NCP EITC eligibility when taxpayers' youngest children turn 18, and find the NCP EITC increased the proportion of noncustodial parents paying their child support in full by approximately 1 percentage point. Effects were stronger among parents with low child support orders. Our estimates may represent upper-bound…
