Child Support: Help to Women and Children or Government Revenue?
| Autor: | Ellen B. Bogolub |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 1994 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Social Work. 39:487-489 |
| ISSN: | 1545-6846 0037-8046 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/sw/39.5.487 |
| Popis: | In July 1992, during his acceptance speech as the Democratic presidential nominee, Governor Bill Clinton called for tighter enforcement of existing child support laws. In August 1992, Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois introduced into Congress a bill (now passed in the House of Representatives) that would render the willful withholding of child support payments to out-of-state offspring a federal offense (personal communication, legislative assistant, Representative Hyde's office, August 5, 1992). Speaking generally, Clinton is a liberal and Hyde is an archconservative. Yet both agree that government should force divorced fathers who do not financially support their children to pay up. This agreement among public servants at opposite ends of the political spectrum suggests the value of a closer look at the matter of child support, which interests both advocates of vulnerable populations and fiscally oriented individuals aiming for increased government revenue. Social workers and others interested in the welfare of women and children know that 90 percent of divorces involving offspring result in a custodial mother and a noncustodial father (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991; Marshall, 1991). They also know that the mother, along with her children, usually endures a dramatically diminished postdivorce standard of living (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991; Weitzman, 1988). Employment as well as child support factors account for this income decline. For a divorced woman, time spent on child care before divorce often leads to a nonexistent, brief, or interrupted employment history, which lessens the chance of finding a postdivorce job that pays well (Weitzman, 1988); the low pay in sex-segregated fields (Weitzman, 1988) and the gender-based wage gap in sex-integrated fields ("Earnings and Benefits," 1992) make matters worse. Additionally, only a minority of divorced mothers get all the child support to which they are entitled. One in four divorced mothers does not even have a court-ordered child support award (Eckholm, 1992). Among divorced mothers who do have a support award, only about half actually receive the full amount; about one-quarter receive part, and about one-quarter receive nothing (Furstenberg & Cherlin, 1991). Therefore, advocates of women and children stress steady, prompt, and full child support payments as a partial remedy to the reduced income of divorced women and their children ("Child Care and Support," 1992). Child Support as Revenue However, some people promoting child support enforcement focus on taxpayers rather than women and children. Cognizant that 45 percent of women who apply for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) do so because of separation or divorce (Kilborn, 1992), conservatives emphasize that child support nonpayment leaves taxpayers with a big AFDC bill. This camp's view is reflected in the way child support payments accrue to AFDC families; in all 50 states, no matter how much a father gives, his ex-wife and children receive a "pass-through" of only $50 per month (Eckholm, 1992). The rest goes to replenish revenue spent on AFDC. Should Representative Hyde's bill become law, any money obtained from men with ex-wives and children on AFDC would be divided in this way. In other words, a double standard ensures that divorced families who do not receive AFDC benefit fully from child support; needier AFDC families, apparently deemed less worthy, do not benefit as much. Another revenue-oriented approach to child support nonpayment was suggested by Senator Dale Bumpers (D-AK) (Cushman, 1992). Bumpers proposed that ex-wives who are owed child support be able to claim a tax credit, whereas their nonpaying ex-husbands would be penalized. Calculations are readily available indicating that the "the measure would more than pay for itself [because] . . . the tax break for the mother, in her lower tax bracket, would not be as big as the tax penalty for the father, in his higher bracket" (Cushman, 1992, p. … |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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