Financial Support For Children Research Articles

The Power of South African Courts to Order Scientific Tests to Determine the Paternity of a Child: Highlighting the Existing Gaps

Legislative reticence on the issue of compelling an unwilling or uncooperative parent and child to submit themselves for scientific test to determine the paternity of a child has sparked plenty of controversial approaches by the judiciary of South Africa: the designated authority as upper guardian of all children in the Republic. While the notion of ‘best interest of the child’ is factored in when making this determination, some courts have held that they lack such a power to make an order of that nature. Others have entertained the view that it might not be in the best interest of the child, especially when it is likely that the results of the test may prove that the alleged father is not the biological father and financial obligations may cease in this regard. In the view of another high court, discovery of the truth is also in the best interest of the child and as such the court may order such scientific tests as may be necessary. This article explores the legislative silence on the issue of ordering scientific tests. It examines the different cases in which various high courts took a different reasoning, at the end of which inconsistencies, controversies and uncertainties became the unfortunate outcome. In order to resolve this legal puzzle, especially at a time when the integrity of mothers seems to be questionable, and considering the huge financial implication it may have on those who have to pay financial support for children, the high courts may need to provide more consistency in their approach to the issue of ordering parents and children to undertake scientific tests to establish paternity. In addition, legislative reform may be needed to lay this dilemma to eternal rest.

Old Age Support in Urban China: The Role of Pension Schemes, Self-Support Ability and Intergenerational Assistance.

With the aim of probing into the life satisfaction of retired urban elderly in China with respect to old age support systems, this study examines the effect of pension reform with its existing inequalities across demographic and social groups on the life satisfaction of retired urban residents. The complementary role of intergenerational assistance and self-support on the life satisfaction of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the pension scheme was analyzed using an ordered logit regression model with 2015 national representative data from China’s Health and Retirement Longitudinal Survey. Our sample consists of a cross-sectional data set of 3815 retired urban elderly aged 60 and above. The empirical results depict that though enjoying benefits from the public pension scheme generally enhances life satisfaction, beneficiaries of the Government and Institution Pension and Enterprise Employee Basic Pension are more advantaged than beneficiaries under the Urban-Rural Social Pension Scheme. The pension inequalities existing at provincial levels and across social groups such as gender and residence registration status also affect life satisfaction adversely. Women and rural ‘Hukou’ registered retired urban residents are at an apparent disadvantage. Getting financial and emotional support from children broadly improves life satisfaction. Non-beneficiaries of the public pension benefit more from the financial support of children than public pension beneficiaries. There is also a positive effect of cohabiting with children on life satisfaction when retired urban residents are single as compared to being married. Financial and physical self-support ability in forms of good health, home ownership and wealth management enhance life satisfaction significantly. However, largely, retired urban elderly have a higher life satisfaction when they are financially independent of children and are supported by state pension schemes. Our findings indicate that self-support ability of the elderly together with pension benefits are more effective in enhancing the life satisfaction of retired urban elderly in China. It is recommended that government institute policies to promote personal finance initiatives by the elderly while improving the pension scheme and reducing pension inequality.

Impact of medical subsidy disqualification on children's healthcare utilization: A difference-in-differences analysis from Japan

Financial support for children's medical expenses has been introduced in many countries. Limited work has been done on price elasticity in children's healthcare demand, especially in countries other than the United States. Moreover, it remains unclear how the effects of a change in the cost sharing rate on healthcare demand would differ by medical condition. We investigated the impact of an increase in the cost sharing rate on medical service utilization among school children as a whole and for each of nine common conditions, applying a difference-in-differences approach. The study period ranged from April 1, 2012, to March 30, 2014. Participants were elementary school children in an urban area who were eligible for National Health Insurance (a community-based public insurance) during the study period and who were enrolled in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade in April 2013. We collected observations from 2896 persons and 69,504 (2896 × 24 months) person-months. When elementary school children were promoted to the 4th grade, they became disqualified for a municipal medical subsidy. The control group was the children promoted to the 2nd or the 3rd grade, who remained eligible for the subsidy. All data were obtained from health insurance claims. We identified the nine most common medical conditions among the subject children, and stratified the analyses by the condition diagnosed. We found that an increase in the cost sharing rate reduced outpatient service utilization as a whole. Also, we observed an increase in inpatient service utilization, not because of worsened health conditions, but rather due to substitution of inpatient service for outpatient service. The reductions in outpatient service were heterogeneous across medical conditions; declines were sharper for mild or chronic conditions. These findings may help to characterize how a change in cost sharing rate affects health outcomes in children.

Low‐Income and Never‐Married Families: Service and Support at the Intersection of Family Court and Child Support Agency Systems

State child support enforcement agencies facilitate the legal establishment of paternity for children born outside of marriage and enforce the payment of child support by noncustodial parents. They are directed to move cash resources from a nonresident parent to the home of his/her child. Ideally, this income transfer provides financial support for children and security for custodial families. This article describes how the agency is challenged in the fulfillment of this responsibility by the adversarial nature of its own process and by the intractable poverty and unemployment (among other barriers to economic security) of a significant portion of its caseload.

THE CHILD SUPPORT GRANT AND YOUNG MOTHERHOOD: EXPLORING CORRELATES OF DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMOLOGY

Young motherhood is acknowledged as a challenge in South Africa, as it is characterised by competing responsibilities in relation to care for children, and the desire to advance into employment and education (Graham, 2012). These competing aspects could place young mothers at a high risk of experiencing depressive symptoms. Young mothers are fortunate that they can access the Child Support Grant (CSG) as a source of financial support for children living in poverty in South Africa. But what other factors play a role in young mothers’ mental well-being? In this article, a secondary analysis of the National Income Dynamics Study (South African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU), 2008) is conducted, with the aim to investigate the associations between individual factors, household factors and depressive symptomology in young mothers aged 18-24 years. The findings revealed that there is a distal relationship between the CSG and depressive symptomology in young mothers. This means that while the CSG is a source of support and young mothers retain the CSG when they move away from home, the grant without family support is inadequate in protecting young mothers against depressive symptoms. Interventions that are aimed at building parenting and financial abilities are, therefore, crucial in protecting young mothers against depressive symptoms as they age.

Проблемы развития детского социального туризма в Крыму

In this article the authors present concept of shared children´s tourism and children´s social tourism, considered systemic problems in the functioning of children´s sanatorium and health institutions of the Crimea. First, the authors provided a retrospective analysis of the formation and the scope of children´s social tourism in Crimea how the economic transformation is conducted in provision of social support for children´s health in a command and market economic systems. Substantiated are the factors affecting the crisis state of institutions of child health improvement: the processes of privatization of property of children´s health institutions, lack of budget financing of government programs to improve the health of children from socially disadvantaged groups, the decline in the quality of children´s health. The article highlights directions of the long-term prospects for the development of children´s health resorts of Crimea related to the development of children´s tourism in the tourism industry in Russia. As in the federal programme of support for rehabilitation of children argued, there should be the establishment of the state order for recreation system and financial support for children´s health institutions. The authors note trends in the development of children´s health centers of Crimea in the following directions: wider specialization, existing health centers, taking into account changes in the structure of child populations, comprehensive treatment. To create control systems of functioning and development for the recreational and tourist complex, which are formed within the administrative-territorial formations, there should be introduced the following elements: resource componentsof recreational potential (natural, human, financial, material, technological, informational), organizational and legal support of the form of ownership in the recreation and tourism complex, including the relationship arising in the course of ownership, management, exchange of different categories of resources, state regulation of processes in the system of children´s health institutions.

Fathers' Financial Support of Children in a Low Income Community in South Africa.

We used data from the Birth to Twenty Cohort study to understand children’s receipt of financial support from their fathers in a low income, Black community in urban South Africa. Specifically, we (1) described fathers’ financial support over the life course of children; (2) estimated survival probabilities of receiving support for all children and not receiving support for children who experienced a parental union dissolution; and (3) identified factors that explained variation in the receipt of support after a union dissolution. Results suggest that most children received full or partial support throughout the life course. Furthermore, a high proportion of children received support after a union dissolution with much of the variation driven by pre-dissolution support, father’s education and the presence of extended kin.

Making Policymakers More Gender Aware: Experiences and Reflections from the Women's Budget Group in the United Kingdom

SUMMARY The UK Women's Budget Group (WBG) is a think tank focusing on the gender implications of economic policy that attempts to influence UK government policy to be more gender aware and adopt policies that decrease gender inequality. The WBG has had the overarching aim of encouraging the government to take account of gender in policy formation and to monitor and hold itself accountable for the gender effects of its policies. At the same time the WBG has advised the government on the gender effects of particular policies and proposed modifications to make policies more supportive of (or less harmful to) women, and poor women in particular. Such advice has covered a number of areas, including fiscal policy, tax credits, income support, financial support for children, childcare policy, maternity and parental leave, work-life balance policies, pensions, pay equity, training and productivity, the use of indicators and the collection of government statistics. While the government has been keen to acknowledge the WBG's influence on certain policies, in other areas the WBG has had no discernible effect on policy. This analysis focuses on several common gender issues, including taking account of gendered life-courses, intra- as well as inter-household gender inequalities, valuing and remunerating care and accounting for unpaid work, to assess the WBG's impact and possible reasons for success or failure.

We Are All Responsible for Responsible Fathering: A Response to Walker and McGraw

If vigorous critique is a sign that the original work is taken seriously, then we feel flattered by Alexis Walker and Lori McGraw's (current issue) response to our article. We have prepared a spirited response. To fully appreciate this exchange, we urge readers to pull the May 1998 issue of this journal and reread our article on responsible fathering, rather than relying only on Walker and McGraw's characterization of its purpose, scope, and content-or our defense of it (Doherty, Kouneski, & Erickson, 1998). We will use Walker and McGraw's organization of their critique in our response. WHAT Do CHILDREN NEED? We begin with a point to be repeated frequently in our response. Our article explicitly stated that we were not focusing on the effects of fathers' involvement on children's well-being, and we did not review the copious literature on the effects of active fathering. Instead, our work focused on the factors that influenced active, responsible fathering. Early reviewers of the manuscript justifiably asked us to state our assumption about why it is important to promote active, responsible fathering. In response, we wrote the two sentences that Walker and McGraw objected to: . . an assumption behind this article-and our value stance-is that children need and deserve active, involved fathers through their childhood and adolescence. The prime justification for promoting responsible fathering is the needs of Walker and McGraw read into that statement a full-fledged position that children can be raised successfully only by parents of both genders. We intended no such global assertion. In fact, in the Conclusion section of the article we stated: Nor do we take a position on whether there are essential characteristics of fathering versus mothering or whether having parents of two genders is necessary for the well-being of children. The growing literature on gay and lesbian parenting suggests that these kinds of questions are more complex than many scholars assumed in the past (p. 289). Again, our purpose was to say that the main goal of promoting responsible fathering is for the sake of the children. WHICH FATHERS MATTER? Walker and McGraw objected to our decision to limit our review to biological fathers. Our response will be brief. As with all authors, we reserve the right to delimit our review, and we clearly stated its purview. We spent more than a year reviewing a huge amount of literature on responsible parenting by biological fathers, and we felt we could not do justice to the complexities of other kinds of father circumstances and keep our work and our manuscript manageable. We also referred readers to good reviews of the literature on gay fathers. MOTHERS' GATEKEEPING, FATHERS' RESISTANCE Walker and McGraw believe that we exaggerated mothers' gatekeeping and minimized fathers' resistance to active involvement with their children. We note that much of Walker and McGraw's criticism is aimed at an article by Allen and Hawkins (1999) that was published after our article. We refer those criticisms to Allen and Hawkins for a response. For our part, we can see that our choice of a vague word, many, to characterize ambivalent mothers was problematic. We should have said some, because, although the phenomenon has been documented in some families, the actual extent of the maternal gatekeeping is not known. We also agree with Walker and McGraw's contention that we should have addressed fathers' resistance more explicitly. Their criticism is valid. FATHERS AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT Walker and McGraw believe that we minimized the role of fathers' financial support for children's well-being. As noted before, we were not primarily addressing the impact of various forms of father involvement on children's lives; rather, we focused on influences that lead fathers to be involved. We did define economic support as one of the four core aspects of responsible fathering (following Levine and Pitt, 1995), and we paid considerable attention to explaining why some fathers provide economic support and others do not. …

The Child Support Scheme: Failures of the first decade

This article focuses upon the first ten years of implementation of the Australian Child Support Scheme. It investigates the philosophy and social ideology which underpin the Scheme and questions whether the objectives of the Scheme are being achieved. The central thesis is that the ideology of the Scheme needs to be fundamentally altered in order to properly cater for financial support of children of separated families.The article suggests that the amendments put forward by the recent Joint Select Committee investigation into the Child Support Scheme will not ameliorate the deficiencies in the Scheme as they do not go to the pivotal core of what a child support scheme is created to do. The article describes how the ideologies inherent in the Scheme might be altered in order to create a system of child support which would cater for all system users.

Normative Beliefs about Parents' and Stepparents' Financial Obligations to Children following Divorce and Remarriage

Family forms are changing rapidly, but are cultural belief systems changing at the same pace? For instance, what are the cultural norms regarding a parent's financial responsibility for his or her children following divorce? What are the financial responsibilities of stepparents toward their stepchildren? Understanding cultural beliefs such as these is an important step in the process of planning appropriate public policy and effective educational and intervention programs. Rather than basing programs and policy entirely on what experts believe to be the best approach, it may be more efficient to first ascertain what values and beliefs are extant in society and to build upon these. Experienced clinicians advise novice therapists to begin where the client is. This recommendation is fitting for social policy makers and family practitioners alike. The primary objective of this study is to assess societal expectations regarding family obligations following marital dissolution and remarriage. A key issue in these family transitions is financial responsibility for children. Therefore, normative obligations regarding the financial support of children are specifically examined. It probably is safe to assume that most Americans believe that parents are obligated to financially support their minor children until the children are capable of being self-sufficient. The institutions of society, including laws and social policy, are built around this expectation. Many people also would agree that divorce does not end parents' obligation to financially support their children. However, because there is a wide variation in noncustodial fathers' levels of involvement with their children and in the amount of economic support they provide for them, some researchers have concluded that there is an absence of clear norms or rules regarding fathers' responsibilities postdivorce (e.g., Seltzer, 1991b). Parents' financial support of children following divorce is by no means a uniform phenomenon. Despite the passage of stricter child support legislation in recent years, many divorced parents, usually fathers, either fail to pay child support, are negligent in their payments, or pay an insufficient amount to adequately support their children. According to 1987 U.S. Census Bureau figures, 50% of noncustodial fathers who are required to pay child support do not pay the full amount, and 25% of these fathers pay nothing at all (Peters, Argys, Maccoby, & Mnookin, 1993). Partly as a result of this reduced financial support, children whose parents divorce often find that their standard of living drops dramatically. Divorce can mean a decrease of 25% to 30% in household income for mothers and children (Hoffman & Duncan, 1988). Major reductions in household income can have severe consequences. For many children, it means that they must live at or below the poverty level. Of all the children eligible to receive child support in 1981, 35% were living in poverty and nearly 30% were receiving some form of welfare assistance (Nichols-Casebolt, 1986). The economic conditions that define poverty threaten children's immediate well-being and place them at risk of long-term disadvantage. Poor children are likely to experience a number of serious risk factors, including malnutrition, physical and psychological stress, abuse and neglect, chronic and untreated health problems, and learning disabilities (Chafel, 1993). Even those children who do not become impoverished following parental divorce may have their life course drastically altered due to reductions in household finances. For example, divorced women and their children are often forced to move into less expensive housing in a new neighborhood and school district. Such moves uproot children at a time when they are already having to adapt to major changes in their lives. The stress associated with these transitions adds to the stress of parental separation. The custody arrangement of children following divorce is often related to the level of financial support they receive. …

Enforcing Child Support Obligations: the attitudes of separated fathers

In the UK the 1991 Child Support Act has introduced major changes to the way in which the state intervenes in the financial support of children when their parents separate. The new approach requires much higher payments from separated parents (in most cases fathers) and enforces these payments much more rigorously than in the past. However, although research shows that most separated fathers did not pay regular child maintenance under the old system, there is little information available on the reasons for this non-payment. The research reported here deals with the attitudes of separated fathers, drawing on in-depth interviews with a small sample of men in order to explore their attitudes towards child maintenance payments. These interviews pre-date the implementation of the Child Support Act but suggest that many of the issues which are now emerging reflect a complex set of attitudes about the nature and extent of the financial responsibility of parents towards their children.

Financial Support of Children Involved in Special Needs Adoption: A Policy Evaluation

This paper represents 1 of the 1st systematic analyses of state subsidy payments to families adopting children with special needs (children with physical and/or mental disabilities and children who are classified as hard-to-place). The analysis focuses on the monetary subsidies provided to adoptive parents of special needs children. It attempts to characterize variations in subsidy levels between counties and the impact of subsidy levels on childs length of time until adoptive placement. The data set employed in this analysis was collected from primary sources and is 1 of the 1st available depositories of information on subsidy payments for special needs adoption. Results indicate that child and case characteristics explain a significant proportion of the variation in state adoption subsidy levels but that a substantial portion of between-county variation in subsidy level remains unexplained. Subsidy level was not found to affect to the adoption placement rate at the margin except for those children with mental disabilities. The policy implications of these results are discussed. (authors)

Financial responsibility for children following divorce and remarriage

In this article the phenomena of the declining financial status of children following the divorce of their parents are explored. Two cultural beliefs are proposed as particularly relevant for understanding why some parents do not provide financially for their children following divorce: the belief that the nuclear family form is the only one that is normal and natural, and the belief that an individual's rights are of supreme importance. The consequences of these beliefs for the financial support of children are discussed, and suggestions for addressing the situation are presented.

Factors Associated with Joint Custody Awards

Abstract Court records of 358 divorce cases involving children from matched counties in two states with opposite legal presumptions concerning joint legal custody were reviewed. The impact of such presumptions upon actual custody awards was examined, as well as the correlation between demographic and other custody arrangement variables and joint legal and physical custody in both states. It was found that the existence of a presumption concerning joint legal custody affected legal but not physical custody award patterns. Significant correlations were discovered between joint custody and the presence of specific language in court orders concerning parental rights/responsibilities and financial support for children; parental education; gender of plaintiff; welfare agency involvement and defendants' requests for custody. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The symbolic meaning of childbearing.

Women born during the baby boom are predicted to have historically high rates of childlessness and low fertility. Many popular explanations for such predictions point to the costs involved in having and rearing children—both direct and opportunity costs. The evidence for such costs, however, is quite weak. In this article, the costs in earnings, labor-force time, and time with one's spouse are considered and argued to be inadequate to explain contemporary women's low fertility. Instead, it is argued that fundamental values held by women about male-female relationships and the role of women in society are quite important in affecting women's fertility. Limited empirical tests of this argument provide consistent support. This article concludes by noting how, for growing numbers of women, the role of mother is being redefined in ways quite similar to the traditional role of father—financial support of children.

Action for Children's Television: How Pediatricians Can Help the ACT

I should like to call to the attention of the members of the American Academy of Pediatrics the organization Action for Children's Television (ACT) which was founded in 1968 by concerned mothers. ACT's stated purposes are: (1) to persuade TV networks, stations, and advertisers that children are special human beings and not simply miniature consumers; (2) to encourage and support good entertaining programming for children of all ages; (3) to eliminate commercialism from children's programs and to require a reasonable amount of programming each week designed for children of different ages; and (4) to substitute a new system of financial support for children's programs by commercial underwriting and public service funding, in the belief that this system would look toward the benefits to children rather than the profit to the advertisers.