Child Support Policy Research Projects, 2003–2005
Projects, October 2003–December 2005
Under the 2003–05 research agreement between IRP and the Wisconsin
Department of Workforce Development, there are eight primary projects.
Reports will be posted upon completion.
1. Collection of Court Record Data (CRD)
2. A Survey of Parents’ Living Arrangements
3. Who Gets What Placement?
4. A Review of the Wisconsin Child Support Guidelines
5. Child Support Orders and Payments
6. Forgiveness of Arrears
7. Child Support and Economic Well-Being in Low-Income Families
8. Child Support Orders for Health Care
1. Collection of Court Record Data (CRD)
Since 1984, IRP has sponsored the collection of court record and child
support payment information from a sample of paternity and divorce
cases involving minor children from 21 Wisconsin counties. These
data provide information on child placement orders, use of the child
support guidelines, and deviations from the guidelines. Such information
is not consistently recorded in the state’s KIDS database,
nor is it available in any other administrative data. The current
project involves updating information on over 1,000 divorce and paternity
cases in an earlier sample from 2001 and the collection of data concerning
a new sample from 2003, containing both adjudicated and voluntary
paternity cases and divorce cases from court records in the sample
counties.
2. A Survey of Parents’ Living Arrangements
Shared-placement living arrangements are becoming more common in Wisconsin
divorce cases, constituting nearly 25 percent of physical placements
in 1997–98. Research from a California study in the 1980s had
suggested that shared-placement living arrangements might become,
over time, more like mother sole-placement arrangements. An IRP parent
survey conducted in 2001 had, however, suggested that there was considerable
stability in such arrangements and that fathers in these arrangements
were considerably more involved with their children than were fathers
where the mother had sole custody (see IRP
Special Report 83). A
2004 survey, the fifth in a series conducted by IRP, is expected
to provide valuable information on the viability of shared-time placement
over longer periods of time, and on the effect of such arrangements
on the payment of child support. Together, the fourth and fifth surveys
will provide a large enough sample, over a long enough time, to assess
how shared custody placements affect contact with children and the
provision of child support in both divorce and paternity cases.
Related Studies: M. L. Krecker, P. Brown, M. S. Melli, and L. Wimer,
Children's Living Arrangements
in Divorced Wisconsin Families with Shared Placement (Special Report
83), June 2003.
Patricia R. Brown, The Father-Child
Relationship in Voluntary Paternity Acknowledgment Cases. Report
to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Bureau of Child
Support. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
February 2006.
Patricia Brown, Eun Hee Joung, and Lawrence M. Berger, Divorced
Wisconsin Families with Shared Child Placements. Report
to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Bureau of Child
Support. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
February 2006.
3. Who Gets What Placement?
National and state placement policies have changed in recent years,
no longer invariably favoring the placement of children with their
mothers. This research, using IRP’s court record data, is documenting
changes in the proportion of cases that result in sole placement
with the mother or the father, and in variations of split or shared
placement decisions. In May 2000, state policy was again revised
to encourage arrangements maximizing the amount of time children
spend with both parents. IRP is assessing the extent to which policy
changes may have affected placement arrangements.
Related Studies: Steven T.Cook and Patricia Brown. Recent
Trends in Children's Placement Arrangements in Divorce and Paternity
Cases in Wisconsin. Report
to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Bureau of Child
Support. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison, May
2006.
Maria Cancian, Judith Cassetty, Steven T. Cook, and
Daniel R. Meyer. Placement Outcomes
for Children of Divorce in Wisconsin,
January 2002.
4. A Review of the Wisconsin Child Support Guidelines
This project has three parts. The first part is a new review of the
literature and research on the costs of raising children. This update
on earlier research is looking at theoretical issues in the allocation
of estimates of family expenditures, using new research and newly
available national data on parents’ expected contributions
to college costs, and how these vary by family income. As part of
this review IRP is also exploring the implications for Wisconsin’s
child support guidelines and for proposed changes in those guidelines.
In the second part of the project, IRP is examining courts’ compliance
with the Wisconsin percentage-of-income guidelines, establishing
a baseline of current practice in preparation for possible future
rule changes. In the last part of the project, IRP is examining the
extent to which child care costs may have affected the amount of
child care ordered by the courts, as part of a continuing review
of the factors that enter into the courts’ use of state guidelines.
Related Studies: Emma Caspar, Ingrid Rothe, and Anat
Yom-Tov. The Use of Wisconsin’s
Child Support Guidelines: Evidence from 2000 through 2003. Report
to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Bureau of Child
Support. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison, July
2006.
Steven T. Cook. Use
of Wisconsin’s Child Support Guidelines in Shared Placement Cases,
August 2002.
Ingrid E. Rothe, Mei-Chen Hu, and Lynn Wimer. “Use of Wisconsin’s
Child Support Guidelines in Paternity and Serial Obligor Cases.” Report
to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Bureau of Child
Support. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
2000.
Ingrid E. Rothe, and Mei-Chen Hu. 2001. “Use of Wisconsin’s
Child Support Guidelines: A Preliminary Report.” Report to the Wisconsin
Department of Workforce Development, Bureau of Child Support. Institute
for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2001.
Ingrid Rothe, Judith Cassetty, and Elisabeth Boehnen, Estimates
of Family Expenditures for Children: A Review of the Literature.
Report to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, Bureau of
Child Support. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin–Madison,
2001.
5. Child Support Orders and Payments
This research is seeking answers to a series of questions regarding
the relationship between the size of the support order and the likelihood
and amount of payments: Will orders that are set too high discourage
compliance? Do lower support orders lead to better compliance by
noncustodial parents? Do they result in lower total amounts of support
paid? An earlier report (see below) considered only parents with
one order over a one-year period. The new work examines three-year
outcomes, and also examines parents who have payment orders for more
than one family (serial obligors).
Related Studies: M-C. Hu and D. Meyer, Child
Support Orders and Payments: Do Lower Orders Result in Higher Payments? March
2003.
6. Forgiveness of Arrears
This project examined arrears forgiveness programs currently operating
in Wisconsin counties and is now implementing and evaluating a random-assignment
experiment to evaluate an arrears forgiveness
project in Racine County.
Related Studies: Judi Bartfeld, Forgiveness of State-Owed
Child Support Arrears (Special Report 84), February 2003.
7. Child Support and Economic Well-Being in Low-Income Families
There are two components to this project. First, IRP researchers are
using administrative data from Wisconsin to address two basic questions:
What portion of the incomes of single mothers in Wisconsin comes
from child support? How regular is that support? This work extends
analyses completed under a previous contract by considering all Wisconsin
families, not just those receiving cash welfare or with incomes below
poverty, and by including an analysis of the regularity as well as
the level of payments. The second part of the analysis uses data
from three waves of the National Survey of America’s Families
to assess the contribution of child support to the incomes of single
parents, comparing outcomes in Wisconsin and other states over time.
Related Studies: Maria Cancian, Daniel R. Meyer, and Hwa-Ok Park,
The Importance of Child Support for Low-Income
Families, September
2003.
8. Child Support Orders for Health Care
The federal government is strongly promoting increased use and enforcement
of medical support orders. But what proportion of low-income noncustodial
parents have access to affordable health insurance from which their
children might benefit? To provide data that might help answer
this question, IRP is exploring the feasibility of adding new elements
to the Wisconsin Family Health Survey that would seek information
regarding such matters as insurance costs and child support orders.
Related Studies: Thomas Kaplan and Ingrid Rothe, Medical
Support Orders: Potential Fiscal Effects of Matching Wisconsin Insurance
and Child Support Data, January 2003.
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