Child Support and the Educational Attainment of Young Adults: Changes in the 1980s

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Surveys the importance of support payments

This book examines the effect that child support payments had on the educational attainment of young adults during the 1980s, to test the hypothesis that child support payments are an indicator of total parental investment in their children's human capital. This study predicts an attenuation of the relationship between child support income and children's educational attainment after the implementation of more stringent child support enforcement. Data from the 1979, 1984, and 1988 Current Population Survey (CPS) Child Support Supplements were used to assess the impact of the improvements in the child support enforcement system, which was aimed at increasing the proportion of reluctant payers among fathers.

Compares payments and educational attainments

The aim of this study was to discover whether the educational disadvantage associated with living in a single-parent family decreased over the 1980s, andwhether the positive correlation between child support income and educational attainment of children in these families diminished over this period. The results show that the receipt of child support payments somewhat eliminates the educational disadvantage of living in a single-parent family, and that among child-support-eligible families, the amount by which the effect of child support income exceeds that of other family income declines significantly over the 1980s.