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"Child support"
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Child Support and Father-Child Contact: Testing Reciprocal Pathways
I use three waves of panel data to examine the relationship between child support payments and fathers' contact with their nonmarital children. I disaggregate support into fathers' formal and informal payments and incorporate cross-lagged effects models to identify the direction of causality between payments and contact. After including the behavior from the prior wave (lagged term) and a rich set of family characteristics, I find a marginally significant effect of paying formally at Time 1 on the likelihood of contact at Time 2 but no effect of contact at Time 1 on formal payments at Time 2. In the first examination of the relationship between informal support and father-child contact, I find a strong, positive reciprocal relationship between the likelihood and frequency of father-child contact and the likelihood and amount of informal support, with slightly stronger and more consistent effects of contact on payments than of payments on contact.
Journal Article
Child Support Enforcement and Fathers’ Contributions to Their Nonmarital Children
This study examines the total package of child support that mothers receive from the nonresident fathers of their children, by focusing on three components of total support: formal cash, informal cash, and in-kind support. Using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this article considers how contributions change over time and the effects of child support enforcement on these contributions. Findings suggest that total cash support received drops precipitously over the first 15 months of living apart (as informal support drops off) and then increases slightly after 45 months (as the increase in formal support overtakes the decrease in informal support). While the study finds no effect of enforcement on total support received in the first 5 years after a nonmarital birth, the substantial differences in total cash support received by the length of time that parents have not been cohabiting suggest that strong enforcement may be efficacious over time.
Journal Article
They Look at You like You’re Nothing
More than 22 million or 1 in 4 children in the United States are currently served by the child support program. This program, the third largest used to address childhood poverty, regulates non-custodial parents’ financial support of their children through federal, state, and municipal legislation and policies. The collateral consequences, particularly those related to economic stability and criminal justice involvement, associated with child support system participation have been widely studied. However, many of the interpersonal interactions between those who have cases in the system and those who work in the system have been largely ignored. In this article, I use courtroom observations, in-depth interviews, and cultural artifacts to explore the practices of stigmatization and shaming in this important legal and bureaucratic process. I explore stigma and shame in three thematic areas: (1) shame in social interactions, (2) shame as a tool of social control, and (3) the social consequences of shame. I ultimately suggest that stigma and shame in the child support system, resembling that in the welfare and criminal justice systems, reinforces cognitive boundaries between parents perceived as “responsible” and those perceived as “deadbeats.”
Journal Article
Parental Debt and Child Well-Being: What Type of Debt Matters for Child Outcomes?
Wealth inequality in the United States has increased tremendously over the last several decades and has potentially serious repercussions for disparities in child well-being. Household debt, a key component of wealth, may also play a role in such disparities. In this study, we explore the associations of parents’ unsecured debt with children’s socioemotional well-being. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we compare the associations of mothers’ unsecured household debt, fathers’ unsecured household debt, and fathers’ child support arrears with socioemotional outcomes among nine- and fifteen-yearold children who have a nonresident father. We find robust evidence that nonresident fathers’ child support arrears, but not other types of parental household debt, are associated with worse outcomes and that these associations become stronger as children age.
Journal Article
'I know what I should be feeding my child': foodways of primary caregivers of Child Support Grant recipients in South Africa
Despite South Africa being an upper middle-income country producing enough food to sustain its population, and having an advanced social welfare system, it has high levels of food insecurity at the household-level. Food insecurity is linked to malnutrition and undernutrition in children. This manuscript addresses gaps in knowledge about food choices and practices of primary caregivers of children in receipt of South Africa's largest cash transfer programme, the Child Support Grant (CSG).
The main objective of the study was to explore CSG caregivers' foodways and the choices they made about what food to buy, where to buy it and for what reasons, in Langa in the Western Cape and Mt Frere in the Eastern Cape.
We conducted a total of 40 in-depth interviews and 5 focus group discussions with primary caregivers of Child Support Grant recipients younger than 5 years in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces.
Caregivers' food choices were less influenced by cultural practices and personal preferences, than by financial and physical constraints in terms of what and where to access food. Constraints in food choices were chiefly a consequence of the small amount of the grant, as well as a food environment that only availed foods of a certain quality and type in these low-income communities
The foodways of recipients of social assistance can only be better aligned with nutrition messaging and policy if there are changes in the monetary value of cash transfers, and the food environments of low-income households which determine access to, availability and affordability of nutritious food. Local informal food enterprises play an important role in the food system of CSG recipients and need to be considered in any strategies that seek to reform the food system of low-income communities in South Africa and similar settings
Journal Article
The Unintended Consequences Facing the South African Government in the Process of Distributing Child Support Grant
High levels of poverty, inequality, and unemployment pose numerous socio-economic challenges to developing countries worldwide (Lesenya, 2015:3). South Africa, a developing country, is characterised by high unemployment and extreme poverty. It has called for the introduction of social security policies to ensure social protection for vulnerable groups. Although social security policies are designed to alleviate poverty, they are characterised by unintended consequences. The South African government introduced various social grants for children, including the Child Support Grant (CSG), Care Dependency Grant (CDG), and Foster Child Grant (FCG). However, this study will concentrate on the unintended consequences of the Child Support Grant (CSG), as the South African government faces negative implications for providing this grant. In 1998, the government introduced this grant to help lower-income households meet their children's basic needs. The paper employed a qualitative research approach, utilising secondary materials like conference papers, journal articles, and theses to uncover the unintended consequences the government encountered while distributing child support grants. Among other findings, the study found that some parents, legal guardians, and caregivers use the grant for things that they were not intended for, which makes it tough to establish the impact of the grant on the beneficiaries.
Journal Article