Sorensen, Elaine, and Ariel Hill. 2004. "Single Mothers and Their Child-Support Receipt: How Well Is Child-Support Enforcement Doing?" Journal of Human Resources 39(1): 135-154.

An increasingly large number of children are being raised by single parents. Child-support enforcement is aimed at mitigating the economic loss that these children face as a result of living with just one parent. Prior research has shown that early child-support reforms have succeeded in increasing child support, but recent reforms have not been examined and the critical role of welfare participation has been overlooked. Using 25 years of data from the March Current Population Survey augmented by child-support policies, this paper updates and expands our understanding of the impact of child-support enforcement on single mothers.

Elaine Sorensen is a Principal Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Ariel Hill is an Information Technology Specialist at the U.S. General Accounting Office. The authors wish to thank Margaret Weant who developed the initial data for this analysis and Chava Zibman and Kate Pomper who have maintained the data in recent years. The authors are grateful to Andrea Beller, Robert Lerman, Gaile Maller, Linda Mellgren, and Michael Wiserman for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders, or to the U.S. General Accounting Office. The data used in this article can be obtained from Elaine Sorensen, The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037, esorensen@ui.urban.org.