The Effect of Child Support on Selection into Marriage and Fertility

@article{Tannenbaum2020TheEO,
  title={The Effect of Child Support on Selection into Marriage and Fertility},
  author={Daniel I. Tannenbaum},
  journal={Journal of Labor Economics},
  year={2020},
  volume={38},
  pages={611 - 652}
}
This paper studies the expansion of US child support policies from 1977 to 1992 and its consequences for marriage and fertility decisions. I develop a model showing that child support enforces ex ante commitment from men to provide financial support in the event of a child, which (1) increases premarital sex among couples unlikely to marry and (2) reduces the abortion rate by reducing the cost of child-rearing to single moms. Using variation in the rollout relative to the timing of nonmarital… 
View on U Chicago Press
digitalcommons.unl.edu
8 Citations
Background Citations
1
Methods Citations
1
Results Citations
1

8 Citations

Can Public Policy Increase Paternity Acknowledgment? Evidence from Earnings-Related Parental Leave

A child’s family structure is a fundamental determinant of future well-being, making it essential to understand how public policies affect the involvement of fathers. In this paper, we exploit a…

Child Support Enforcement and Child Mortality

ABSTRACT This paper explores the potential benefit of enforcements in Child Support policies to child mortality rates. Exploiting the sharp changes in Child Support laws across states and over the…

Betting the House: The Role of Homeownership in Marital Commitment and Child Investments

Investments in children are enjoyed by both parents, but may disproportionately affect the mother’s future earning potential, rendering her more sensitive to the risk of relationship dissolution. We…

Untying the Knot: How Child Support and Alimony Affect Couples’ Decisions and Welfare

In many countries divorce law mandates post-marital maintenance payments (child support and alimony) to insure the lower earner in married couples against financial losses upon divorce. This paper…

The Economics of Shotgun Marriage

Many couples marry either just before or soon after they have their first child. I show that married couples who have the first child before or in the year of marriage (kids-first) divorce around…

Collateralized Marriage

We study the role of wealth in the marriage contract by developing a model of the household where investments in public goods can be made at the cost of future earnings. If couples cannot commit ex…

More or Less Unmarried. The Impact of Legal Settings of Cohabitation on Labor Market Outcomes

We show how the legal settings of unmarried cohabitation affect partners' labor market outcomes. In Canada, cohabiting couples are automatically entitled to certain rights after a few years of…

Do courts know how to incentivize? Behavioral response of non-resident parents to child support obligations

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 67 REFERENCES

The Impact of Child Support Enforcement on Fertility, Parental Investments, and Child Well-Being

Increasing the probability of paying child support, in addition to increasing resources available for investment in children, also may alter the incentives faced by men to have children out of…

Divorce, Fertility and the Shot Gun Marriage

Total fertility declined in states that introduced unilateral divorce, which makes dissolution of marriage easier. Also the ratio of out-of-wedlock fertility over total declined. We suggest an…

The effect of child support enforcement on child support payments

This paper examines the effect of state child support enforcement legislation on child support received from absent fathers by ever-married women due support in 1978 or 1981. The analysis is based…

The Impact of Child Support Enforcement Policy on Nonmarital Childbearing.

The interaction of welfare and child support regulations has created a situation in which child support policy's incentives that discourage unwed fatherhood tend to be stronger than its incentives…

A Theory of Out‐of‐Wedlock Childbearing

  • R. Willis
  • Economics
    Journal of Political Economy
  • 1999
In 1960, marriage was a virtual precondition for childbearing. By 1997, out‐of‐wedlock births accounted for 26 percent of fertility among whites and 69 percent among blacks. This paper presents a…

The Role of Paternity Presumption and Custodial Rights for Understanding Marriage Patterns

In marriage, men obtain and women surrender parental rights because: (i) by default, an unmarried woman giving birth is the child's only known parent and sole custodian; (ii) a married mother shares…

Signing Up New Fathers: Do Paternity Establishment Initiatives Increase Marriage, Parental Investment, and Child Well-Being?

With nearly half of US births occurring out of wedlock, understanding how parents navigate their relationship options is important. This paper examines the consequences of a large exogenous change to…

Dunning Delinquent Dads: the Effects of Child Support Enforcement on Child Support Receipt by Never Married Women

Using data from administrative records, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and the Current Population Survey, we find that the proportion of never married mothers receiving child support…

An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States

This paper relates the erosion of the custom of shotgun marriage to the legalization of abortion and the increased availability of contraception to unmarried women in the United States. The decline…

CHILD SUPPORT IN THE U.S.: CAN FATHERS AFFORD TO PAY MORE?

This paper presents up-to-date estimates of the ability of nonresident fathers to pay child support. While no nationally representative data exist on the incomes of fathers, this issue has become…
...