Interrelation of child support, visitation, and hours of work

Monthly Labor Review, June, 1992 by Jonathan R. Veum

The positive association between working and receiving child support payments for mothers is similar to that found by Grossman and Hayghe.[15] The results on the relation between child support and work for both parents suggest that factors that influence decisions concerning child support and visitation are similar to those that influence labor force participation decisions.

Women who receive child support payments (support only or both support and visitation) are more likely to work than those who do not. (See table 3.) Among working mothers, those who receive visitation only are the most likely to work fewer than 500 hours a year, whereas mothers who receive child support payments only are the least likely to work 2,000 hours or more a year. Also, while mothers who receive child support only are more likely to have annual earnings of less than $10,000 (in 1988 dollars), those who receive both support and visitation are the most likely to have annual earnings of more than $30,000.

There are two noteworthy implications from these results. First, child support recipients are more likely to work than are nonrecipients, which is consistent with previous studies. Second, among recipients, mothers of children who are visited by the absent father tend to work more hours and have higher earnings than do mothers of children not visited. The results suggest that there may be inherent differences among recipients of child support payments whose children are visited by their fathers because it is doubtful that visits by absent fathers allow mothers to work longer hours (the fathers probably do not act as child care providers; as shown earlier, most fathers are also working).

An implication of child support studies is that women who receive child support payments use this income to pay for child care, thereby allowing them to increase their work hours. Data show that women who receive both child support payments and visits from absent fathers and those who receive support payments only are the most likely to use child care. However, among working women who use child care, those receiving child support only spend, on average, $38.36 per week for child care, the lowest of the four child support and visitation status groups. In contrast, women who receive both child support and visitation spend the most on child care. Hence, it appears that mothers whose children are visited by absent fathers spend more on child care than do those whose children are not visited. This link between child support, visitation, and child care is particularly important, given that one reason offered for a father's nonpayment of child support is that it is costly and often impossible for the noncustodial parent to control the resources of the custodial parent.[16] Basically, the absent father is less willing to pay support if he is not sure what the mother will do with the money. If the father believed the child support payments would be used to offset child care costs, he might be more willing to pay.