CSDE: Origin and Purpose
Wisconsin is the only state in which families participating in cash welfare programs regularly receive all current child support paid on their behalf. Wisconsin’s innovative child support policy offered an opportunity to evaluate the potential advantages and disadvantages of a new approach to child support, and to increase our knowledge concerning the way the child support system works for low-income families. The Child Support Demonstration Evaluation, a random-assignment evaluation of Wisconsin's unique approach to child support and welfare, has been conducted by the Institute for Research on Poverty.
Under Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the welfare program that existed before 1996, families received the first $50 per month of child support paid on their behalf; the remainder went to public agencies as partial reimbursement for their welfare expenditures. Given new flexibility by federal welfare reform legislation, most states, in reconstructing their cash assistance programs, decided to retain all child support paid to families receiving assistance, others to maintain the $50 pass-through.
Wisconsin is the only state in which families participating in cash welfare programs regularly receive all current child support paid on their behalf. Wisconsin's cash assistance program, Wisconsin Works (W-2), which began in the fall of 1997, emphasizes immediate work or work activities as a prerequisite for cash assistance. W-2 attempts to replicate the "real world of work"; for example, it does not vary assistance with family size and for most participants it directly ties assistance to hours of participation in work activities. In accordance with this approach, resident parents participating in W-2 are allowed to keep all child support paid on behalf of their children, as they would if they were working outside the program. The policy combination in which W-2 families receive all that is paid on their behalf (the full pass-through) and receive no corresponding reduction in their assistance check (the full disregard) is unique to Wisconsin.
Wisconsin's innovative child support policy offered an opportunity to evaluate the potential advantages and disadvantages of a new approach to child support, and to increase our knowledge concerning the way the child support system works for low-income families. The policy was initially implemented under a waiver from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and in granting the waiver, the federal government required a random-assignment evaluation of the program. The evaluation, which began in October 1997, has been conducted by the Institute for Research on Poverty. The first four-year evaluation was conducted in two phases. A second evaluation began in the spring of 2003. This three-year multicomponent research project includes additional experimental and nonexperimental analyses of Wisconsin and national child support and welfare policy initiatives, as well as a new focus on the implications of complex family structures.
The IRP evaluation has been conducted under a competitive-bid contract from the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development. The major part of the funding has come from the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Principal Investigators for the project are Maria Cancian (Public Affairs and Social Work) and Daniel R. Meyer (Social Work).