Child Support Orders Research Articles

Why Doesn’t She Have a Child Support Order?: Personal Choice or Objective Constraint*

Abstract: Quantitative analyses were conducted in order to examine maternal characteristics connected to the establishment of a child support order and reasons why some mothers did not have an order. Based on single‐mother reports from the Current Population Survey during the 1994–1998 period, results indicated that approximately 36% of mothers eligible for child support did not have an order, and, for the majority of them, objective constraint such as establishing paternity played at least some role in not having an order. Findings suggest the need for interventions employing diverse approaches that are sensitive to racial and demographic patterns amongst single mothers in order to remove barriers connected to child support award.

Predictors of Depression Among Low-Income, Nonresidential Fathers

This article investigates the life conditions that contribute to low-income fathers’ depression and that may jeopardize their relationships with their children. This work is based on a cultural-ecological framework that emphasizes the need to understand these fathers within their larger familial and social contexts. The sample consisted of 127 predominantly African American participants in two urban and rural responsible fatherhood programs. Of the fathers, 56% reported depressive symptoms indicating cause for clinical concern. In addition, fathers’ resource challenges (unemployment; inability to pay full amount of child support order; limited access to reliable transportation; lack of permanent housing; problems with alcohol or drugs; health problems or disability; and criminal conviction history), residence (rural vs. urban), and level of social support were all significant predictors of fathers’ depression. The authors discuss how these findings can be used to guide future programmatic and policy initiatives pertaining to low-income, nonresidential fathers.

Welfare Reform and Child Support Policy in the United States

In all the debate over the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act in the United States, little attention has been paid to the impact of welfare reform on women's ability to secure child support, a key to bringing single mothers out of poverty. Advocates of welfare reform claim it will reduce women's poverty, but we argue that this legislation actually makes it difficult for poor women to receive adequate child support because the legislation is written to serve the interests of the government, not those of poor women and children. We argue that the goals of child support policies in the United States must change from punitive attempts to enforce child support orders to the type of child support assurance policies found in other welfare states that guarantee basic benefits for children.

Revisiting “The Politics of Fatherhood”: Administrative Agencies, Family Life, and Public Policy

Revisiting “The Politics of Fatherhood”: Administrative Agencies, Family Life, and Public Policy

The Impact of a Presumption for Joint Legal Custody on Father Involvement

Several states have laws that declare a presumption for joint legal custody for divorced families. Although some presumption laws have existed for over two decades, their effects remain unexamined. This study assessed the impact of a presumption law on father involvement by examining days and nights of contact between father and child per month, father attendance at children's activities, father participation in decision-making and payment of child support orders. The results indicate that a presumption law does not currently result in more father involvement; however, the author recommends the application of more well controlled studies before making recommendations to professionals in the field.

The Effect of Child-Support Policies on Visitations and Transfers

Recent research on child support issues has been concerned with normative problems involvingthe distribution of welfare between divorced parents and their children as well as with the assess-ment of the behavioral responses of parents to child support orders and custody arrangements( see, e.g., Del Boca and Flinn (1995), GarÞnkel and Klawitter (1990), Bartfeldt and GarÞnkel(1996), Del Boca (1996), Del Boca and Ribero (1998), and Flinn (2000)). While there is bynow an extensive literature analyzing the effects of child support policies on monetary transfersof noncustodial parents and the extent of compliance with child support orders, little researchhas been done on the relationship between monetary transfers between parents and the divisionof the child™s time. While income transfers to the custodial parent are no doubt importantfor the child™s consumption and general well-being, there exists considerable empirical evidencesuggesting that the division of the child™s time between the parents has important e ffects on thechild™s welfare ( Beller and Graham (1993)).There have been few analyses of this relationship.Weiss and Willis (1985) provide one theoretical motivation for the positive relationship betweenthe noncustodial parent™s contact time with the child and their level of transfers. They claimthat increased contact time allows better monitoring of the custodial parent™s expenditures onthe child, which induces higher levels of transfers to the custodial parent.We have developed a model (Del Boca and Ribero ( 1999)) in which visitations and childsupport are the outcomes of a negotiation process whereby the father exchanges income forvisitation time. Institutional agents, such as judges, state legislatures, etc, can impact thewelfareofthemembersofthenonintactfamilybyalteringtheendowmentsofeachofthe1

Moving beyond the Child Support Revolution

The single most studied, debated, and legislated issue in family law over the past 15 years has been the problem of child support enforcement. Billions of dollars of state and federal money have been spent to transform what was once a minor aspect of state law into a complex nationwide scheme for establishing paternity, determining support obligations, and collecting payment. As the term deadbeat dad has entered our lexicon and political consciousness, Congress has enacted at least five major pieces of child support legislation, all with strong bipartisan support and usually during presidential election years.1 Much of the motivation for the enormous national effort and expense devoted to the child support revolution was the promise that better support enforcement would help keep single-parent families off the welfare rolls and allow the government to recoup its growing expenditures for public benefits. The transformation swept up all families with child support orders, however, including those with no connection to the welfare system. In the new regime, there are computerized systems to locate absent parents and their assets and keep track of support orders and a variety of new enforcement

The effects of joint legal custody on mothers, fathers, and children controlling for factors that predispose a sole maternal versus joint legal award.

Findings from comparisons of joint and sole custody families that do not control for predivorce differences in demographic and family process variables (factors that may predispose families to choose or be awarded joint custody) are of limited generalizability, since obtained group differences may be attributable to predisposing (self-selection) factors, custody, or both. This study compared a random sample of 254 recently separated, not-yet-divorced families on 71 predivorce variables that might plausibly differentiate between families awarded joint legal versus sole maternal custody. Twenty such factors were identified and controlled for in subsequent comparisons of 52 sole maternal and 26 joint legal custody families 2 years postdivorce. Families with joint custody had more frequent father-child visitation, lower maternal satisfaction with custody arrangements, more rapid maternal repartnering, and fewer child adjustment problems (net of predivorce selection factors). Moreover, these effects did not appear to be moderated by level of predecree parental conflict. No association between custody and fathers' compliance with child support orders was obtained.

Being There: The Importance of the Present Father in the Design of Child Support Obligations

The article examines the extent to which child support payments should be adjusted (either upward or downward) to reflect the frequency of visitation by noncustodial parents. The article argues in favor of California's rule, which automatically adjusts support obligations to reflect the amount of time spent with both parents. The California approach gives noncustodial parents (usually fathers) an incentive to remain involved in the lives of their children, and penalizes parents for opting out. The California rule thus works to deter paternal absence and the associated bad effects on children: depression, insecurity, substance abuse, impoverishment, crime, delinquency, premature sexuality, teen pregnancy, unemployment, underemployment, and poor educational performance. California's approach is also more equitable and better grounded in moral principles. It is likely to benefit custodial parents by providing them with economic help when the noncustodial parent opts out, and relieving them of financial and physical burdens of caretaking when the noncustodial parent remains involved. It may benefit women by enhancing their financial situation and by contributing to a cultural climate that is respectful of women's roles. It is likely to enhance satisfaction with the law and to increase compliance with child support orders.

Modes of Interaction Between Divorced Parents

I develop a model in which exact compliance with child support orders is synonymous with cooperative outcomes with respect to child good expenditures. The child support order imposed by institutional agents serves as focal point for the problem of dividing the gains from cooperation. Compliance is observed when the gains from cooperation exceed the value of noncooperation for both parents. The model is estimated using administrative data from the state of Wisconsin. My estimates imply that increasing child support enforcement activities may have weak effects on the welfare of children of divorced parents.

Perceived Fairness and Compliance With Child Support Obligations

This paper examines whether perceptions of fairness motivate fathers to pay child support and whether perceptions of fairness interact with routine income withholding in collecting payments. Using a study of 392 nonresident fathers who filed for divorce between 1986 and 1988 in the state of Wisconsin, I found that both perceived fairness and income withholding increase fathers' compliance with child support obligations. The effects of these two strategies on compliance are not additive, however. If fathers think their child support orders are fair, the use of routine income withholding does not add to compliance.

Interstate Comparisons of Child Support Orders Using State Guidelines

Interstate Comparisons of Child Support Orders Using State Guidelines* Maureen A. Pirog,** Marilyn E. Klotz, and Katharine V. Byers This article examines changes in child support orders over the past ten years across states. Specifically, this article looks at changes over time; the impact of welfare reform on child support orders; and the extent to which child support orders adequately reflect typical expenditures on children. The methodology employed was a mail survey of the State Courts and Child Support Enforcement Agencies of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Results of the study indicated a wide variation in child support orders across the states for families in similar circumstances. In addition, states with high public assistance payments tended to have lower child support payments and vice versa. Finally, in the vast majority of states, child support orders did not adequately reflect typical expenditures on children. Key Words: child support, public assistance, single-parent families, welfare reform. The 1984 Child Support Enforcement Amendments required each state to establish a child support guideline, a specific numeric formula to determine the magnitude of child support obligations. Since October 1987, these formulas were advisoly to the judiciary who were primarily responsible for setting the levels of child support payments. The move from judicial discretion to a well-formulated set of objective criteria was prompted by observations that child support obligations were generally inadequate, inequitable, and resulted in inefficiencies in the child support enforcement system (Pearson, Thonnes, & Tjaden, 1989; Williams, 1987). A further move away from judicial discretion came with the 1988 Family Support Act. Effective as of October 1989, judges and other child support administrators have been required to use state child support guidelines in setting child support orders unless there was a written, specific finding indicating why the application of the state guideline would be inappropriate or unjust. A recent national survey of 21 counties in 11 states found that 83% of child support cases followed the state guidelines whereas 17'3 were formal deviations (CSR, Inc., 1996). As a result, the vast majority of child support orders are calculated according to the guidelines, but a limited number of cases are determined by court discretion. While the history of state child support guidelines is relatively short, it has been a turbulent period affected by the increasing incidence of child poverty in single parent households (Blank, 1997), burgeoning state budget deficits in the 1980's and early 1990's (Gold, 1995; Poterba, 1994), upheaval of America's social safety net (Murray, 1984), and the growth of fathers' rights advocacy groups.1 This article provides a description of the magnitude of child support orders and how they have changed between 1988 and 1997 for five different family income scenarios. The magnitude of the 1997 orders is compared to typical family expenditures on children. A discussion of child support obligations for the lowest income group is framed in the context of current state welfare reforms. Specifically, the 1996 Personal Responsibilities and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act created sweeping changes in the nation's social safety net. It removed the entitlement status of public assistance benefits by replacing AFDC with TANF so that low-income families no longer automatically receive benefits if they meet certain income thresholds. Rather, states can impose work requirements and other stipulations before applicants receive benefits. In addition, the federal legislation created a fiveyear maximum time-limit for receiving benefits. States have wide discretion in the provision of public assistance benefits, including shortening the time limit below the federal five years. As a result, many families that had been entitled to cash transfers from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program are now subject to federal and state time-limits on cash assistance under the new Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. …

Patterns of Child Support Compliance in Wisconsin

This article examines 5-year compliance patterns among Wisconsin child support cases that came to court in 1986-1988. We find only limited support for the common assumption that compliance with child support orders declines over time. The average percentage paid is about .65 during each of the first 5 years following divorce or the establishment of paternity. One trend is an increasing polarization into groups of nonpayers and full payers. Although we find considerable stability from year to year among nonpayers (79% of nonpayers in one year do not pay in the following year) and full payers (84% of those who pay in full one year also pay in full the next), there is considerable change over the course of 5 years. Compliance during the first year provides some indication of long-term compliance, but about half of fathers change their compliance rate over the period. We find important differences between divorced and unmarried fathers, differences that are more pronounced than is apparent from a single year of data. Key Words: child support, compliance, single-parent families. Children living in single-parent families are economically vulnerable, with about half of such children living in poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). This economic insecurity and the increasing numbers of such children have triggered considerable interest in the effectiveness of the child support system. Researchers and policymakers widely acknowledge that low compliance with existing child support obligations is problematic. Nationally, approximately one half of resident parents with child support orders received the full amount due in 1991, one fourth received partial payments, and one fourth received nothing (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1995). Low annual compliance also has been documented in a variety of local and state studies (e.g., Bartfeld & Meyer, 1994; Meyer & Bartfeld, 1996; Peters, Argys, Maccoby, & Mnookin, 1993). Accordingly, numerous policy initiatives over the past two decades have attempted to increase rates of compliance. Such initiatives include intercepting income tax refunds of noncomplying, nonresident parents; placing liens on the property of delinquent obligors; and routinely withholding child support from the wages of parents with support orders. The most recent initiatives were part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act of 1996, which requires states to have legislation in place to rescind driver's licenses and professional licenses when nonresident parents become delinquent in their payments. Despite the consensus that child support compliance is inadequate, existing knowledge about long-term compliance is surprisingly limited. We know little about how aggregate compliance rates change between the early and later years of an order, and more important, we know little about how compliance changes from year to year at the individual level or how annual compliance compares with compliance over the longer term. Such information is critical both in defining the problem of low child support compliance and in designing appropriate interventions. This article begins to fill these gaps by presenting data on aggregate and micro-level patterns of compliance among divorced and unmarried fathers who have child support orders in Wisconsin. THEORY AND LITERATURE REVIEW Theoretical models of child support compliance typically posit that compliance is affected by the nonresident parent's ability to pay, by the economic needs of the resident parent, by the strength of the ties between the nonresident parent and his or her ex-partner and children, and by the stringency of the enforcement system. These models have been substantiated to varying degrees by empirical work examining the extent to which nonresident fathers comply with child support orders at a particular point in time. (See, for example, Meyer & Bartfeld, 1996; Peters et al., 1993. …

Deadbeats and turnips in child support reform

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management: Volume 17, Issue 1, pages 44?51, Winter 1998 Child support reforms have focused almost exclusively on punitive measures, driven by the stereotypical image of a deadbeat dad who can afford to pay child support but refuses to do so. This image fits some noncustodial fathers, but ignores the diverse nature of this population. We show that lack of income is a significant barrier to child support payments for 16 to 33 percent of young noncustodial fathers, whom we call turnips after the common saying that You can't get blood from a turnip. Furthermore, the characteristics of turnips are similar to those of custodial mothers who are long-term welfare recipients?both are disproportionately composed of young, poorly educated, never-married minorities with little work experience. These findings suggest that a new approach to child support enforcement is needed, one that offers these fathers flexible child support orders that both reflect their current economic circumstances and provide employment and training assistance to enable them to meet their child support obligations in the future.

A National Profile of Nonresident Fathers and Their Ability to Pay Child Support

This study provides the first national estimates of nonresident fathers' income and child support payments as reported by nonresident fathers, themselves, in two nationally representative surveys. According to these data, nonresident fathers could pay as much as $34 billion more in child support if all nonresident fathers had child support orders and if those orders were fully paid. This figure has been cited extensively by President Bill Clinton and other policymakers as justification for strengthening the enforcement of child support. The article explains how this figure was derived and provides a national profile of nonresident fathers and their ability to pay child support. Key Words: child support, fathers, nonresident parents. In the popular press, nonresident fathers are typically depicted as deadbeat dads who can afford to pay child support but choose not to, denying their children needed income. Previous research has certainly confirmed that such men exist, but it also has shown that many nonresident fathers are poor and lack the ability to pay child support. To date, we have not had a national profile of nonresident fathers to ascertain exactly how many of them are able to pay child support but choose not to and how many are already poor. This lack of information is due, in part, to the fact that large national surveys typically do not ask men about their children who live elsewhere. Moreover, nonresident fathers are seriously underrepresented in the national surveys that have asked about these children. This study uses two surveys-the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the 1990 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)-to understand who nonresident fathers are and how much child support they could afford to pay. I begin by explaining how I identify nonresident fathers in these surveys and by measuring the extent to which nonresident fathers are underrepresented. (The Appendix gives more details on identifying nonresident fathers.) I then develop a method of reweighting the data to take into account nonresident fathers' underrepresentation in these surveys. Once the data are reweighted, I provide a demographic and economic profile of nonresident fathers who self-report in the surveys, as well as all nonresident fathers, including those who are missed by these surveys. I contrast the characteristics of nonresident fathers with those of custodial mothers and resident fathers. I end by estimating how much more child support nonresident fathers could potentially pay. PREVIOUS RESEARCH Previous efforts to measure the ability of nonresident fathers to pay child support have met with serious data problems. First, most large, nationally representative surveys do not ask men whether they are nonresident fathers. Surveys that have asked this question have drawn exceedingly low response rates, including those collected in the 1979 Current Population Survey and the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households (Cherlin, Griffith, & McCarthy, 1983; Seltzer & Brandreth, 1994). These studies find about 60% as many nonresident fathers as custodial mothers. In an effort to overcome the lack of national data on nonresident fathers, Garfinkel and Oellerich (1989) developed an indirect method of determining nonresident fathers' income that was based on the characteristics of custodial mothers. Many studies have used this approach to examine nonresident fathers' ability to pay child support (e.g., Garfinkel, 1992; Garfinkel & Oellerich, 1989; Meyer, Garfinkel, Oellerich, & Robins, 1992). These studies conclude that nonresident fathers could pay considerably more child support, but the findings are not based on direct evidence of nonresident fathers and their actual income. Furthermore, this method cannot be used to determine other characteristics of nonresident fathers, such as their behavior in the labor force, their marital status, and living arrangements. …

The Long Arm of Justice: The Potential for Seizing the Assets of Child Support Obligors

The Long Arm of Justice: The Potential for Seizing the Assets of Child Support Obligors* Maureen A. Pirog-Good** and Lydia Amerson This article explores the potential for the Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program to expand its asset seizure activities by documenting the size and composition of asset portfolios of fathers who live apart from their children using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experiences-Youth Cohort (NLSY). Further, current CSE asset seizure practices are evaluated in light of the results presented on the asset holdings of nonresidential fathers. The CSE program, enacted in 1975, is state administered with oversight provided by the federal government. State CSE personnel locate nonresidential parents owing child support, establish paternities and child support orders, enforce court orders, and distribute collections. Most state child support collection efforts focus on securing the obligor's income flow rather than his or her stock of accumulated assets. Of the $8.9 billion in child support collected nationwide in 1993, the percentage secured through the liquidation of seized assets is unknown (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1993). This number is undoubtedly small some state CSE programs have only recently begun to explore the use of asset seizure to secure past-due child support. The gravity of securing child support is highlighted by the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The law changes welfare as we know by requiring recipients to be working within two years of receiving a welfare check or lose their benefits. In addition to restricting benefits to teenagers and legal immigrants who have lived in the country less than ten years, the new law penalizes recipients if a child's paternity is not established, places tighter restrictions on food stamp eligibility, and also places a five-year lifetime limit on cash benefits. Balancing the prospect of reduced public aid, the law also includes provisions for more effective child support enforcement to assist needy families. The number of children who are eligible to receive child support is large and growing: nearly 27% of all children in the U.S. live in a single parent household (U.S. House of Representatives, 1994), and by age 18 about half of all children will have lived in a one-parent household at some point in their lives (Bumpass & Sweet, 1989). However, a 1992 Census study indicates that of the 11.5 million custodial parents, only 5.3 million had active child support orders. Even among those with active child support orders, only half received full payment, one-quarter received partial payment, and the rest received nothing (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995). The new welfare law authorizes states to restrict drivers' licenses of obligors and prioritizes outstanding child support ahead of federal debts. With regard to asset seizure for the collection of child support arrearage, the act improves credit bureau, banking, and financial institution data matches for the identification of noncustodial parents who owe past-due support. The law also improves the ability of child support enforcement officials to place liens and levies on obligors' real and personal property out-of-state. We extend the literature in this policy area in two ways. First, this is the only study of assets owned by fathers who do not live with their children. We focus on noncustodial fathers because 88% of the 17.6 million children who lived in a single parent household in 1992 lived with their mothers (U.S. House of Representatives, 1993, p. 744). The assets of nonresidential fathers who range from 20 to 35 years of age are compared to those of men who live with their children or who are childless. One limitation of this study is that it describes the asset holdings of all nonresidential fathers, yet only some nonresidential fathers are noncompliant obligors. …

Improving Parental Partnerships in Low-Income Families as a Means for Increasing Noncustodial Parental Compliance with Child Support Orders

This article reports evaluation results from a federally funded project designed to improve the co-parenting relationship between custodial and noncustodial parents. The project was hypothesized that improving this relationship would result in increased voluntary compliance with child support orders. Results indicate that, although numerous strategies to involve noncustodial parents in the program were employed, virtually none was successful. Although there was a slight increase in compliance with child support orders for participant families, this was not thought to be a result of program participation and did not have a positive impact on income level of participant families. Further, the quarterly income of the participant families fell dramatically over the course of the program. Discussion focuses on the flaws in family policy that contribute to the failure of the parental partnership concept for low-income families.

An Evaluation of Child Support Reforms

ABSTRACT: Among the policy changes proposed in the United States for determining equitable child support orders there is the proportionate order, which consists in setting orders as a percentage of the non‐custodial parent's income and wage withholding which involves the improvement of the procedure of collection of child support payments with the use of automatic withholding.In this paper we use US data to compare proportionate and fixed child support awards and the interaction of these order types with wage withholding. We conduct an empirical investigation of the effects of these systems on divorced fathers’child support transfer. Our empirical results show that wage withholding tends to alleviate the problem of non‐compliance, while proportionate orders do not.

Changing Policy, Changing Practice: Mothers' Incomes and Child Support Orders

With the increasing numbers of affected by divorce and economic vulnerability after divorce, child support is a critical concern of national policymakers. The efforts to increase child support have included a shift to numerical guidelines for the amount of child support orders. Guidelines generally reflect an income-sharing philosophy, in which support is expected of all nonresident parents, of residentparent resources. We examine Wisconsin divorce cases before and after income-sharing guidelines were implemented and find that the negative impact of the mother's income on the size of child support orders has fallen substantially. A multivariate analysis is critical to this assessment; it permits us to distinguish the impact of mothers' and fathers ' incomes on order amounts. The level of child support orders is a critical concern of national policymakers because of the increasing numbers of affected by divorce and because of a growing awareness that who live with their mother when their parents separate or divorce typically see large drops in their economic well-being (e.g., Smock, 1994). In an attempt to increase the level of child support, several policies have been changed in the last decade. One of these changes was a shift from a case-by-case determination of the level of child support orders to the use of a specific formula that systematically relates parents' incomes to the level of child support ordered (Garfinkel & Melli, 1990). Another change was a shift from a costoriented philosophy, in which child support was ordered only when needed because of a custodial parent's limited income, to an income-sharing philosophy in which child support is expected of all nonresident parents. If these changes lead to a greater prevalence of child support orders or higher levels of support, there would be substantial implications for the economic well-being of resident parents and their children. Yet limited systematic empirical research has been conducted on the effect of specific numerical standards, generally referred to as child support guidelines, on the level of child support orders. In this article we examine the effect of guidelines on the level of child support orders in Wisconsin by comparing orders from the early 1980s (before numerical guidelines were required) with those of the latter 1980s (after guidelines were supposed to be used). We examine the correlates of the level of orders, and we focus particularly on the effect of mothers' incomes. We do this because the guideline that Wisconsin selected sets orders based on only the number of and the income of the nonresident parent and ignores the income of the resident parent. This approach is contrary to both the previous policy (the cost-oriented approach) and to some public opinion data (e.g., Corbett, Garfinkel, & Schaeffer, 1988; Schaeffer, 1990). Thus, if orders set after the guidelines really are unrelated to the mother's income, this reflects an overturning of prior practice in a relatively short time, a notable (and perhaps unusual) accomplishment of social policy. A second reason why we are interested in the effect of the mothers' incomes is because Robins (1992) concluded that increases in mothers' earnings were the most important cause of declines in the levels of child support orders during the 1980s. Third, the relationship between mothers' incomes and orders has implications for the distribution of income among divorced parents. Finally, Seltzer (1994) has suggested that rising divorce rates have contributed to increasing ambiguity about what constitutes a family and who has the responsibility to provide for children. She argues that regardless of their biological ties to children. . . when marriages dissolve, men disengage from these children (1994, p. 237). In this context, income-sharing guidelines are particularly important because they require nonresident fathers to support their irrespective of the mothers' resources. …

Compliance with Child Support Orders in Divorce Cases

Les AA. etudient le paiement des pensions alimentaires versees par les parents qui n'ont pas obtenu la garde de leur enfant. Ils examinent un certain nombre de donnees collectees aux Etats-Unis dans le Wisconsin entre 1981 et 1989 concernant des peres divorces. Ils montrent que la qualite des rapports pere-enfant est tributaire de la capacite du pere a verser cette pension. Ils montrent que plus le niveau de revenu du pere est eleve plus le lien entre le pere et l'enfant tend a etre etroit. Ils soulignent le fait que ce lien n'est pas affecte tant que la pension est inferieure a 35% du revenu paternel