FATHER INVOLVEMENT AND CHILD-SUPPORT PAYMENTS: SECOND FAMILIES, MULTIPLE-FATHER FAMILIES, AND INTERSTATE ENFORCEMENT

Professor Beller’s research centers on the economics of child-support payments in the United States and, recently, in the State of Illinois. Her previous work has examined the effects on young adult outcomes of living in a single-parent family. She is also known for her earlier work on racial and gender differentials in the labor market and the impact of equal employment opportunity laws.

During her Center appointment, she will analyze the effects of three major impediments to fathers’ financial involvement with their children: when a father has a second family to support, when his children reside in a family with other children from other fathers, and when he resides in another state. The project uses administrative data from the State of Illinois on welfare recipients that encompasses a time period before, during, and after the welfare reform of the mid-1990s. This research has the potential to (a) benefit taxpayers by saving welfare dollars and (b) improve the well-being of children from single-parent families, who suffer from higher poverty rates than any other age group, particularly in Illinois.