Characteristics of Families Served by the Child Support (IV-D) Program: 2010 Census Survey Results

Characteristics of Families Served by the Child Support (IV-D) Program: 2010 Census Survey Results October 2013 Kye Lippold and Elaine Sorensen The Urban Institute Kye Lippold is a Research Associate at the Urban Institute. Elaine Sorensen was a Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute during the production of this report, but currently works at the Office of Child Support Enforcement, US Department of Health and Human Services. Support for this report is provided by the Office of Child Support Enforcement, US Department of Health and Human Services. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. The authors thank Linda Mellgren and Dennis Putze for their thoughtful comments. Summary This report uses the latest data available from the US Census Bureau to describe custodial families served by the IV-D program, a federally mandated program that promotes parental responsibility and family self-sufficiency by providing families with child support services. According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, • Over 60 percent of custodial families participate in the IV-D program; • Approximately half of the families in the IV-D program had incomes below 150 percent of the poverty threshold; • Nearly 90 percent of custodial parents in the IV-D program are female, their average age is 36 years old, and over half have just one child in the IV-D program; • Almost half of the custodial parents in the IV-D program are non-Hispanic white, another 27 percent are non-Hispanic black, and 20 percent are Hispanic; • Thirteen percent of custodial parents in the IV-D program lived in a different state than the noncustodial parent and another 2 percent lived in a different country; • According to custodial parents, 64 percent of noncustodial parents in the IV-D program spent t ime with their youngest nonresident child in the past year; and • Custodial parents who are poor, never married, under the age of 30, and have limited education are much more likely to receive IV-D services than other custodial parents. Introduction The purpose of this report is to identify the characteristics of custodial families1 who utilize services of the IV-D program. The IV-D program is authorized under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. It is a federal/state/local/tribal partnership to promote parental responsibility and family self-sufficiency by providing child support services. The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) provides oversight and guidance to state and tribal child support agencies. Although OCSE and state child support agencies collect and report a substantial amount of information about child support obligations and collections, they collect relatively little information about the economic and demographic characteristics of custodial families in the IV-D program, called IV-D families. For example, OCSE and its partners do not have information 1 This report uses the term custodial families to reflect families in which a child(ren) lives with his or her biological, adopted, or stepparent and the other biological or adopted parent lives outside of the household. The parent who lives with the child is referred to as the custodial parent. The other parent is referred to as the noncustodial parent. It should be understood that both parents may have legal custody and that physical custody or parenting time may be shared as well. The Census Bureau does not provide a legal definition of custodial parent to survey respondents. Please see the appendix for further information about how custodial parents and families are identified in the Census Bureau survey. 1 regarding the poverty status of IV-D families, or the extent to which custodial parents lack a high school education. Instead of attempting to collect this information on its own, OCSE has worked with the US Census Bureau since the 1970s to collect this type of data. Since 1978, the US Census Bureau, on behalf of OCSE, has added a supplement to its Current Population Survey (CPS) to collect information about the characteristics of custodial families called the Child Support Supplement (CPS-CSS). This supplement, which is currently administered every two years in April, asks a series of questions that first identifies custodial families and then asks about child support awards and services received. The Census Bureau conducts another supplement to the CPS in March of every year, now referred to as the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).2 This supplement collects information about the economic conditions of families during the prior year, which is used to measure the p