Volume 34, Number 1 (Winter) 1999
Meyer, Daniel R., and Mei-Chen Hu. 1999. "A Note on the Antipoverty Effectiveness of Child Support among Mother-Only Families." Journal of Human Resources 34(1):225-234.
The Current Population Survey is used to examine the antipoverty effectiveness of child support, social insurance, and welfare among mother-only families in 1995. Child support brought about 6-7 percent of pre-transfer poor mother-only families over the poverty line, an effect similar to that of social insurance and welfare. A brief trend analysis shows that child support's antipoverty effectiveness has been growing. Some potential reasons why child support's effect is still so small in the face of substantial changes in child support policy are hypothesized.
Daniel R. Meyer and Mei-Chen Hu are from the Institute for Research on Poverty and School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Public Affairs Workshop at the Robert M. LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The authors thank the participants for their comments. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning June 1999 through June 2002 from Daniel R. Meyer, Institute for Research on Poverty, 1180 Observatory Drive Room 3412, Madison, Wl 53706
© 2002 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X