Child Support Feels Different on Male Side

Once again, child support concerns have attracted the attention of the Legislature. Its leaders have proposed a new Department of Child Support, which will elevate these issues to one of the major responsibilities of state government.

The failure of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to deal effectively with these matters has surely led to the new initiative. Yet, there is no reason to believe that shifting responsibilities to Sacramento would make a difference. The emphasis would still be on using the criminal justice system to make dads pay up. That approach puts the proverbial cart before the horse. Our efforts should instead be on ensuring frequent and continued contact between a father and his children. If we do that, the problem of child support payments will largely take care of itself.

The essential reason for the failure of the current policy is that there are two very different justifications for support payments that are generally confused. The first is to ensure an equitable sharing between the parents of the costs of raising their children. The second is to provide an increased level of resources for the children.

Although child support payments are typically justified as leading to increased resources for the children, their function more frequently is to provide for equity between the two parents. Consider the case of a custodial mother with an income of $25,000 a year. She has one child who lives with her. She spends 40% of her income on the child, which is $10,000 per year. That amount includes a good share of her rent and other overall household expenditures that benefit the child.

Now let her be awarded $5,000 in child support, thus equalizing the amount the two parents pay for the child’s care. She views the father’s contribution as compensatory income and spends no more on her child now than she did before.

Consider, however, the incentives for the father. He understands that whatever was spent on the child has already been spent and his payments are being used for other purposes. The critical fact here is that support payments in this example represent additional income to the wife.

While in this example, no part of any additional funds received are spent on the child, the evidence is different. A 1993 study published in the Journal of Labor Economics reported that about 20% of any additional income received by the family is typically spent on the children. What that finding indicates is that, on average, an additional $5 of family income leads to an additional $1 of expenditures on the children in the family.

This factor is important because it affects the father’s incentive to make support payments. From his vantage point, the issue is not how much of total expenditures is allocated to the children or even whether total support payments do or do not cover the full costs of raising his children. Instead, it is how much of his payments actually go to his children’s support. From his perspective, if the mother’s rate of additional expenditures is 20%, then in effect, a $4 penalty is posed for every dollar of payments used for his children.

To be sure, a mother’s expenditures on her children could be made in anticipation of her receiving support payments. But even then, if the mother spent, say, 40% of her income on the children, and support payments were considered a “regular” source of income, the father would pay $2.50 for every dollar actually spent on his children. The principle is the same.

What can we conclude from this?

First, we already know that criminal enforcement is costly to all of us and at best marginally successful at getting fathers to provide financial support for their children.

But how can we enlist a greater degree of voluntary cooperation from fathers?

Recent data indicate that about two-thirds of fathers who see their children frequently do indeed pay child support, while only 16% of those with no contact make these payments.

In effect, to many fathers, support payments represent a charge that a man pays to see his children on a regular basis. When considered in this manner, it is hardly surprising that payments often stop when he no longer sees his children, when the children move away or when their contact is broken for some other reason. These payments are generally made when there is continued contact between father and child, but often not otherwise.

It is, therefore, in the interest of mothers, fathers and children to adopt policies that support and encourage fathers to see their children regularly.