Child support policies and enforcement mechanisms

¶ … child support,' Beller (1996) highlights the issue of children being the intellectual capital of the future and suggests that any society, which wishes to safeguard the socioeconomic well being of its future generations needs to ensure that appropriate and adequate investments are made in the education and overall welfare of its children. Having, thus, tabled the enormous stake that society has in its children, Beller then discusses the unfortunately increasing trend in America today of single parent families, which has led to a sizeable number of children who suffer the outcomes from low income and smaller inputs of parental time. To emphasize the enormity of the issue, Beller cites studies that show that present trends, if unchanged, will lead to six out of every ten children who are born today spending part of their childhood in a single-parent family, usually headed by a mother.

Given the objective of insuring the socioeconomic well being of its future generations and the problem of low income/reliance on welfare faced by single parent families (in 1992, more than half of all children in mother-only families lived in poverty compared with only 10% in married-couple families), Beller goes on to suggest that regular, legally-mandated child support payments from noncustodial parents is one key solution. Beller supports his conclusion through reasoning, backed by research evidence, that child support not only reduces the dependence on welfare but enables the single mother to find high-quality child care so that she can work: "The incomes of women who receive child support are higher than of women who do not, and the difference exceeds the amount of child support received."

Having identified child support as one major approach to resolving the problem of single-parent children suffering from low income and therefore the likelihood of poorer socioeconomic attainments as adults, Beller reviews the steps taken by Federal and State governments to enforce child support payments such as the 1984 'Child Support Enforcement Amendments' and the 'Family Support Act' of 1988 that placed primary responsibility for the support of children squarely on the parents. The result of such changes in public laws has led to some positive impact on child support payments, with available data showing notable gains for black mothers and never-married mothers and an overall analysis indicating that without the improved legal efforts, the real value of child support payments would have declined given adverse socioeconomic factors in the environment during the period being studied.

In his analysis, Beller tables not just the gains but some ongoing problems as well, such as the lack of award and payment, inadequacy of awards, problems of interstate enforcement, paternity establishment, and noncustodial fathers. For instance, Beller points out that as of April 1990, the number of mothers who received a child support award actually declined from 61% in 1986 to 58%, and among those who received payment, the average amount received fell 25% between 1978 and 1985 (adjusted for inflation). Though the receipts rose after 1985, the real value of child support by 1989 still showed a fall of 12.5% as compared to 1978. Beller also tables the fact that even if child support payments had kept pace with inflation, they would still be inadequate taking into consideration actual expenditures on children, even by the minimal standards of the official poverty line. Add to such facts, the problems of interstate enforcement and the issue of paternity establishment in the case of never-married mothers and it is glaringly obvious that child support payments continues to be a major social issue.

Leading from the above findings, Beller discusses the measures already in place to strengthen enforcement such as: the provisions in the 'Family Support Act' of 1988 to make the use of award guidelines by states mandatory, the provision for review and adjustments of award guidelines, and the requirement of Social Security numbers of both parents in the issuance of birth certificates; and the imposing of criminal penalties on noncustodial parents who cross state lines to avoid paying child support.