Phillips Cutright

Abstract

Increasing numbers of fathers of children born out of wedlock are not contributing to these children's economic support. In 1981, a tiny minority (14%) of the 1.7 million never-married mothers living with a child with an absent father had a child-support award, and of these, just 112,000 actually received some payment in 1981. The high rates of noncompliance, and the low level of legal efforts to enforce child support, are the result of attempts to collect payments through inefficient traditional methods, not the inability of fathers to pay, a Wisconsin study has shown. A basic problem with collecting child support under the present system is that it relies on fathers to control their expenditures and voluntarily to send the payment on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis, year after year. As a Wisconsin study shows, full compliance with court-ordered payments dropped from 38% in the 1st year to below 20% by the 5th year among 163 ex-husbands tracked. A proposal by researchers at the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty calls for an "absent-parent tax." The Wisconsin Plan, as it is known, is simply a withholding tax based on the father's gross income and the number of his absent children. If his income falls below a certain level, payments will stop automatically, but will resume if and when it rises above the cutoff point. The Wisconsin plan removes all judicial discretion and lawyer's skill as factors in child-support awards, thus eliminating erratic awards. It also insures that support payments will be maintained during periods of conflict between the father and mother. However, before the Wisconsin Plan can effectively protect children both out of wedlock, a feature needs to be added that will establish paternity at birth. Imposing a real child-support obligation on fathers of children born outside of marriage will introduce a potentially powerful economic incentive for responsible male reproductive and parental behavior.