Examining the relationship between incarceration and child support arrears among low-income fathers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2018.09.022Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This study examined the relationship between incarceration and child support arrears among low-income fathers.

  • The findings infer that incarceration is a predictor of fathers' accrual of child support debt and fathers who have experienced incarceration tend to have higher child support arrears than fathers who have not experienced incarceration.

  • We find some evidence to suggest that when fathers have better financial situations, they are less likely to have child support debt.

  • This study illustrates how people seeking to reintegrate into society from correctional institutions face economic disadvantages which make it more difficult for them to contribute financially to their families.

Abstract

The child support program promotes parental responsibility, so that children receive support from both parents even when they live in separate households. While this program aims to reduce poverty, the program has financially burdensome consequences for low income, noncustodial parents who have experienced incarceration. Noncustodial parents may accrue arrears when they are unable to work due to incarceration. This study examines the relationship between incarceration and child support arrears among low-income fathers. The results from the analyses imply that incarceration is a predictor of fathers' accruing child support debt and fathers who have experienced incarceration tend to have higher child support arrears than fathers who have not experienced incarceration. This illustrates that people seeking to reintegrate into society from correctional institutions face economic disadvantages making it more difficult for them to contribute financially to their families. This study concludes with policy solutions which create cohesion between the child support and criminal justice systems.

Introduction

The goal of the public child support program is to promote parental responsibility, so that children receive support from both parents even when they live in separate households (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2018a, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2018b). The child support program is also considered an intervention to reduce child poverty, as it transfers the income of noncustodial parents to the parent whom has custody of the child or children. In fact, the program has quantifiable results of financially supporting custodial parents, having collected $33 billion in fiscal year 2016 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2017a). Despite its ambitious mission, to an extent the program counteracts its poverty-reduction aspirations. For noncustodial parents who have experienced incarceration, the accrual of child support arrears may cause a barrier for parents to pay down the debt (Pearson, 2004). Thus, the program contradicts its stated goals in this regard.

The intersection between incarceration and child support is often overlooked. This is an important oversight because many individuals with incarceration histories have children. >640,000 people are released to their communities from state and federal prisons every year (Carson & Andersen, 2016) and nearly 9 million people are released annually from jail (Dumont, Brockmann, Dickman, Alexander, & Rich, 2012). Over 50% of the 1.5 million people in federal and state correctional facilities have children under age 18 (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2016). Importantly, many people returning home from correctional institutions face social and economic challenges, such as difficulty finding employment, which suggests that it may be difficult for returning citizens to pay off child support debt (Visher & Travis, 2011).

Extant research finds that when noncustodial parents are unemployed, underemployed, incarcerated, or have a criminal record they accrue child support arrears, (i.e. debt) and a seemingly never ending downward economic spiral can occur (Edelman, Holzer, & Offner, 2006; Hatcher, 2011; Hatcher & Lieberman, 2003; Holzer, 2007). These circumstances may undermine the effectiveness of the child support enforcement program. This article examines the relationship between incarceration and child support arrears among low-income fathers. This study is timely given local, state, and national efforts aimed at criminal justice reform and smart decarceration (Epperson & Pettus-Davis, 2017). While state and local studies examine the intersection of the child support and criminal justice systems (Noyes, Cancian, & Cuesta, 2012; Ovwigo, Saunders, & Borne, 2005), minimal research explores the association between these systems at the national level (Levingston & Turetsky, 2007; Roman & Link, 2015).

The present study has important implications because one of the pathways through which parental incarceration has negative implications for youth is through the economic insecurity that it produces (Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999; Harding, Wyse, Dobson, & Morenoff, 2014). To reduce the impact that mass incarceration has on the intergenerational reproduction of inequality, it is critical that we understand how policies and practices impact the financial security of youth with fathers who have experienced incarceration. Thus, in addition to examining the intersection between the criminal justice and child support systems and explaining how these two systems may perpetuate financial disadvantage, this study concludes with policy-based solutions that have been proposed or adopted to create cohesion between these two systems.

Section snippets

Child support receipt and arrears: background and scope

Research consistently demonstrates how the criminal justice system often creates a host of collateral sanctions, including imposing monetary penalties or legal financial obligations (LFOs) (Beckett & Harris, 2011; Harris, Evans, & Beckett, 2010; Harris, Evans, & Beckett, 2011) on people who are guilty or merely accused of crimes (Allison, 2002, McLean and Thompson, 2007; Rosenthal & Weissman, 2007). These sanctions are sometimes directly related to contact with the penal system. Although LFOs

Data

The data we use in this paper are drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (Fragile Families). Fragile Families sampled approximately 5000 children (and their parents) who were born between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large cities (populations >200,000). To choose families to participate in the study, researchers drew a stratified (stratification was based on policy environments and labor market conditions in cities) random sample from all U.S. cities with 200,000 people or more.

Descriptive results

In Table 1 we describe our analytic sample. The descriptive results confirm that the Fragile Families data is ideal for this study, since a substantial share of fathers have child support obligations and have experienced incarceration. Specifically, 61% of the sample owes child support arrears; among fathers who owe arrears, the average arrear amount is $12,158, with a minimum owed of $5 and a maximum owed of $89,000. Moreover, 40% of fathers have experienced incarceration by the time the focal

Implications

The findings in this study substantiate that collateral sanctions of incarceration stemming from legal debt, family composition, and poverty status contribute to complex circumstances for low-income fathers. The results from the regression models imply that incarceration is a predictor of fathers' accruing child support debt and fathers who have experienced incarceration tend to have higher child support arrears than fathers who have not experienced incarceration. Specifically, we found that

Conclusion

The goal of the public child support program is to promote parental responsibility, so that children receive support from both parents even when they live in separate households. While the program aims to reduce poverty for custodial parents, it must continue to examine its relationship with formerly incarcerated noncustodial parents experiencing financial challenges. These parents may also face social and economic distress when returning to their communities from correctional facilities. While

Acknowledgements

The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW) is a joint effort by Princeton University’s Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) and Center for Health and Wellbeing (CHW), the Columbia Population Research Center (CPRC) and the National Center for Children and Families (NCCF) at Columbia University. The authors would like to thank the FFCWS team for their support and assistance.

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