Millions of single-parent families trying to rise out of welfare dependency are being held back by a burden that too few people are talking about: unpaid child support.
The likelihood of whether a family headed by a single parent lives in poverty is heavily dependent on whether the other parent pays child support. One in three single-parent families who receive no child support are in poverty, but only one in five families live in poverty when a noncustodial parent makes their court-ordered child support payments in full. Nearly half of the families that don’t receive any child support are dependent on at least one form of welfare.
Far too few single-parent families receive any child support at all, and still fewer receive the entire amount they’re owed. In fact, in 2015, fewer than one in four single-parent American families on food stamps received any child support payments. Even among those families who did, most only received a portion of what a court had ordered.
Child support is a legal structure formalizing a parent’s responsibility to support raising their children. Without that support, the parent who is raising the child either bears the entire cost through private means or receives assistance from a variety of welfare programs, including food stamps. There’s a simple way to fix this, and it begins by enforcing child support cooperation policies.
By implementing child support enforcement reforms, states can ensure that single-parent families on food stamps are receiving the support they need, giving them one more boost to lift themselves out of dependency. Child support cooperation policies have been common and successful for decades for cash-assistance welfare programs, and states that have already expanded them to food stamps have seen significant improvements in parents meeting their responsibilities to help support their children.
After Kansas adopted such a reform in 2015, child support collections increased collections by nearly 40 percent within just six months among those affected. Today, these Kansan families are receiving an estimated $1.8 million more in family income as a result.
Formalizing support agreements and enforcing existing court orders would generate life-changing amounts of money. Single-parent families on food stamps receive nearly $5,700 per year in additional income when support is paid in full —increasing their incomes by an average of 54 percent. Based on the experience of states that have already adopted this reform, low-income single-parent families could gain nearly $300 million in added support if all states enforced child support cooperation.
These policies track down absent parents and require noncustodial parents to make their court-ordered payments and otherwise cooperate with collection efforts. And while children are never removed from food stamps by these policies, parents who refuse to cooperate with court-ordered child support collections without good cause would be removed until they cooperate. This ensures that the well-being of the child is prioritized, and that non-compliance by deadbeat parents isn’t rewarded.
Child support lifts more than a million children out of poverty each year and brings millions more one step closer to escaping poverty. It’s a legal parental responsibility that states can and should enforce for the benefit of struggling single-parent families, as well as the taxpayers who fund these programs with the expectation that everyone involved will do their part.
Kristina Rasmussen is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is vice president of federal affairs for the Foundation for Government Accountability.
