abstract: 'Child support is a critical source of income, especially for the growing

  proportion of children born to unmarried mothers. Current social policy

  supports custodial parent employment (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit

  {[}EITC] and other work supports have largely taken the place of an

  entitlement to cash assistance for single mothers of young children).

  Given many single mothers'' limited earnings potential, child support

  from noncustodial fathers is also important. This raises questions about

  the effects of child support on custodial mothers'' labor supply, and

  whether policies that increase child support receipt will thereby

  discourage mothers'' employment. This paper addresses these questions,

  taking advantage of data from a statewide randomized experiment

  conducted in Wisconsin. Unlike previous nonexperimental research, we do

  not find any negative effect of child support on the likelihood to work

  for pay or the number of hours worked in a given week. Recent U.S.

  social welfare policies have focused on increasing both custodial

  mothers'' child support collections and their labor supply. The results

  suggest that these may be compatible policies; the absence of a negative

  labor supply effect strengthens the potential antipoverty effectiveness

  of child support. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.'
affiliation: 'Cuesta, L (Corresponding Author), Univ Wisconsin, Sch Social Work, 1180
  Observ Dr, Madison, WI 53706 USA.

  Cuesta, Laura; Cancian, Maria, Univ Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 USA.'
author: Cuesta, Laura and Cancian, Maria
author-email: laura.cuesta@gmail.com
author_list:
- family: Cuesta
  given: Laura
- family: Cancian
  given: Maria
da: '2023-09-28'
doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.05.006
eissn: 1873-7765
files: []
issn: 0190-7409
journal: CHILDREN AND YOUTH SERVICES REVIEW
keywords: 'Custodial-mother families; Child support receipt; Labor supply effect;

  TANF'
keywords-plus: INCOME
language: English
month: JUL
number-of-cited-references: '18'
pages: 49-56
papis_id: f32b83340b913d46e9b0590e69933f8e
ref: Cuesta2015effectchild
times-cited: '9'
title: The effect of child support on the labor supply of custodial mothers participating
  in TANF
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000356739700006
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '9'
volume: '54'
web-of-science-categories: Family Studies; Social Work
year: '2015'