Child Support Enforcement By: Asiana Smith

Research Question? Is it worth it for local governments to go after child support or is it just a waste of time and money? Are the states that are spending more on Child Support Collection Programs actually collecting more money in Child Support?

Literature Review Child support has become a crucial source of income for single- parent families(Cancian 1). To increase child support collections, both the earning power of noncustodial parents and the stringency of the enforcement system should be increased(Bartfeld 219). A substantial body of research suggest that the use of specific enforcement techniques is associated with increased compliance(Bartfeld 222). Strict child support legislation and high child support expenditures have been found to be associated with high paternity establishment and child support award rates and payments(Huang 37). States with high child support expenditures were more likely to be able to hire a greater number of full-time staff, which was expected to have effects on the implementation of child support enforcement(Huang 41).

Expected Outcome! What I expected from reviewing the literature was to see that increasing expenditures will increase child support collections by state.

WORK CITED Bartfeld, Judi, and Daniel Meyer. "Are They Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Non martial Child Support Cases." Social Service Review (1994): Print. Cancian, Maria, and Daniel Meyer. "Child Support and the Economy." (2005): Print. Cullen, Francis, Karl Heiner, and Pasquale Sullo. "Child Support Collection: A Stick-and-carrot Approach." National Association of Social Workers (1980): Print. Huang, Chien-Chung. "Trends in Child Support from 1994 to 2004: Does Child Support Enforcement Work?" Journal of Policy Practice 9 (2008): Print. Hunag, Chien-Chung, Richard L. Edwards, and Robert B. Nolan. "State Performance on Child Support Enforcement under CSPIA." Journal of Policy Practice 7.4 (2008): Print. Jones, Jackie, and Claire Perrin. "Third Time Lucky? the Third Child Supoort Reforms Replace the Child Support Agency with the New C-MEC." Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 31.3 (2009): Print.

DATA SOURCE USED National Conference of State Legislatures state-data-on-child-support-collecti.aspx state-data-on-child-support-collecti.aspx My data is from 2011 State by State Child Support Collections. It includes the total Distributed Collections, Total Amount of Arranges Due, Amount of Current Support Due, Total Caseload, Total Administrative Expenditures for 2011

Data Analysis 1.Highlighted the Data (from the website) 2.Copied it 3.Pasted it inside spreadsheet 4.I moved the variables I wanted to look at into a new sheet. 5.Made a chart using C1( Total Distributed Collections) and B1( Total Administrative Expenditures) to show the relationship between the two. 6.Then I made a new column for the amount of return on the investment of the expenditures. I used a formula of C1(Total Distributed Collections/ B1(Total Administrative Expenditures=Return on Investment

This show the raw number that are being display by the two previous charts. For example: South Dakota

The Chart shows that the amount of money spent on Expenditures and the amount collected.

Findings..

This chart is the same as first expect the X- axis is organized by state expenditure, and show the relationship a little clearer, the more money invested the higher amount collected.

This Chart has States on the X-axis, and both Total Administrative Expenditure(RED) and Total Distributed Collections(BLUE) to farther show the relationship.

This line chart shows the amount of return on the invest into the child support expenditures by state. For example Alabama Collected 4x the amount of expenditures.

This bar graph show the same return on investment as the previous chart, but in a more organized way.

Findings

In Conclusion !