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“Nearly half |
Is There a Problem with Child Support? Child support is income paid or insurance coverage provided by non-custodial parents to a custodial parent or guardian for their children's financial and medical needs. In Spring 1992, 11.5 million U.S. families with children had a parent living elsewhere. Women headed 86 percent of those families; men headed 14 percent. Only 54 percent (or 6.2 million) of this group had awards or agreements with a non-custodial parent for child support. Of $17.7 billion owed to those who did, $5.8 billion was still not paid at the end of 1992. Only about half of families who had child support awards got the full amount in 1992; about a fourth received nothing at all, in spite of the support order; and the rest got somewhere in between. In 1997, only about 29 percent of all children with a parent living elsewhere--including those without a formal child support order--received child support. The total child support arrearage due U.S. families by fiscal year 2000 for all previous years was $84 billion. Missouri is fairly typical of national trends. The State reported $1.88 billion in back-due child support by Fiscal Year 2000. About $1.2 billion of that was owed to current and former recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families – TANF – cash benefits. When parents in a poor family do pay child support, it amounts to about 26 percent of total family income, on average. A recent report by Claire McCaskill, Missouri’s State Auditor, found that “Missouri collected no more than 20 percent of the child support owed to 538,000 custodial parents and their children from fiscal years 1996-2001, leaving over $1 billion uncollected” during that time period. McCaskill found several problems “affecting the state’s ability to increase collections.” She said the State did not take advantage of all available enforcement options. According to McCaskill, they could have suspended more drivers’ licenses of delinquent, non-custodial parents; checked tax returns to find missing non-custodial parents; and referred some 5,000 more cases to private collection. Child support is a key issue for social service groups and policy makers. The August 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) made important changes to the child support enforcement program, and collections went up dramatically between 1995 and 2000 (more than 60 percent). In FY2002, the State of Missouri collected $447 million in courtordered child support from noncustodial parents through its child support enforcement efforts. In spite of program improvements, nearly half of U.S. children with one parent living elsewhere still do not receive financial support from that parent. There is obviously still work to do. Child support enforcement has been associated with lower nonmarital birth rates; lower divorce rates; improving children’s economic well-being; higher academic achievement; public cost savings by reducing the bill for cash assistance, food stamps and Medicaid; and avoidance of public assistance altogether for some families. The 1996 law gave states new child support enforcement tools they did not have before and it created new rules for individuals. Now is the time to weigh in on the child support discussion.
PRWORA was up for reauthorization this year, but
Congress extended current law through March 2003 during its recent lame duck
session. The continuing reauthorization debate presents an opportunity to
improve the child support collection system.
Back to Poverty at Issue-Winter 02-03 Table of Contents
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