Abstract
Out-of-wedlock childbearing is more common in the U.S. than in other countries and becoming more so. A growing share of such non-marital births identify the father, which can create a legal entitlement to child support. Relatively little is known about individual determinants of the decision to establish paternity, in part because of data limitations. In this paper, we evaluate all birth records in Michigan from 1993 to 2006, which have been merged to the paternity registry. In 2006, 30,231 Michigan children, almost one quarter of all Michigan births, were born to unmarried mothers and had paternity acknowledged. We find that births with paternity acknowledged have worse outcomes along various health and socio-economic dimensions relative to births to married parents, but better outcomes relative to births to unmarried parents without paternity acknowledgement. Furthermore, unmarried men who father sons are significantly more likely to acknowledge paternity than fathers of daughters.
Highlights
The non-marital fertility rate has been rising in the United States over the last several decades
Paternity acknowledgement can serve as a crucial first step in the process of securing support from unmarried fathers since it is a requirement for establishing a legal child support order
The increase in the paternity acknowledgement rate is striking: the fraction of births with paternity acknowledged rises from less than 10 percent to nearly 25 percent over this time period. Much of this increase comes from unmarried parents being more likely to establish paternity – the rate of births with only one parent named on the birth certificate and with no paternity acknowledgement falls from over 25 percent to around 15 percent
Summary
The non-marital fertility rate has been rising in the United States over the last several decades. Paternity acknowledgement, which is a legal procedure that is only applicable to fathers who are not married to their children’s mothers, usually occurs at the time of the child’s birth at the hospital. In most cases, both parents are required to be present at the hospital, and must fill out and sign a form to acknowledge paternity. Prior evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study suggests that among children born out-ofwedlock, paternity acknowledgement is associated with increased formal and informal child support payments and father-child visitation. [3] Child support and father-child contact are in turn positively associated with child mental health and well-being, [4] suggesting the potential role of paternity acknowledgement in child development and social welfare policy
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