D R Meyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 2314 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D R Meyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | D R |
| FAMILY NAME | Meyer |
| SIGNATURE | MEYER D R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3966-0861 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 100 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1005 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 100 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1950 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 19 |
Child Support Arrears and Racial Stratification
Child support arrears accrue when a noncustodial parent fails to meet court-ordered payments and surpassed $115 billion in 2020. Much of this debt is likely uncollectable, as it is disproportionately held by low-income fathers from marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds. In this paper, we examine levels of child support arrears for fathers in different race and ethnic groups, considering whether arrears are linked to four system-level factors…
Paternal Incarceration and Child Support: Fathers’ Formal and Informal Financial Contributions
Stability and change in children's residence arrangements after parental separation
Objectives This study examines stability and change in children's residence arrangements after parental separation in Norway using detailed categories of residence arrangements. Background Most studies use broad classifications of residence arrangements. Finer distinctions may offer better insight into the dynamics of postseparation arrangements. Method The sample comprises 800 children from 504 separated families recruited from family counsellin…
Emerging Ideas. How important is formal child support for family economic well‐being
How much are fathers asked to contribute when children live with low-income mothers? New evidence from Colombia, Finland, Peru, Uruguay, and the United States
This article provides new exploratory information on child support amounts expected for non-resident fathers of children living with low-income, unemployed mothers in Colombia, Finland, Peru, the United States, and Uruguay. Using vignette data obtained through extensive interviews with judicial and social service personnel and child support experts, we investigated whether child support is expected and its amount when single mothers are unemploye…
Children’s physical custody arrangements and mothers’ employment in 11 European countries
As joint physical custody (JPC) of children after parental separation has become more prevalent across countries, we need to know more about its impacts. This study examines whether JPC is associated with mother's paid employment given that childcare responsibilities are redistributed more equally between parents compared to mothers with sole physical custody (SPC). We provide the first comparative analysis on the relationship between a child's p…
Formal and Informal Shared Parenting Among Divorced and Never-Married Parents
ObjectiveThis study examines patterns of informal and formal shared parenting-and potential disconnects between the two-comparing divorced and never-married parents.BackgroundExisting research on shared parenting-where children spend time with both parents-largely focuses on formal shared placement among divorced parents. Less is known about shared placement for never-married parents, and little research exists for either population examining ext…
Shared Placement and Parenting Stress Among Low‐Income Noncustodial Fathers
Shared residence and social security policy: A comparative analysis from 13 countries
Increasingly, children live in both parents' homes equally after parental separation, but little is known about whether social security policy supports these shared‐residence families. We propose that a determination of support for shared residence in various policies can be based on two criteria: whether both parents can receive benefits and whether the total amount received is greater than what would have been received if children lived with on…
Perceptions of fair treatment and child support
Little is known from large-scale studies about whether noncustodial fathers (NCFs) believe the process of setting their financial obligations to their children is fair. We explore NCFs’ perceptions of fair treatment in setting their child support orders, both overall and contingent on the outcomes of the process, and possible factors related to their perceptions of procedural fairness. Using descriptive and multivariate methods on data from over …
Sharing care and sharing costs? Child support and child-related expense-sharing post-separation in Finland and Wisconsin, US
This study analyzes the associations between post-separation child living arrangements and child support outcomes and expense sharing in two contrasting welfare states: Finland and the United States (Wisconsin). The extent to which parents share the economic responsibility of the child after separation varies across countries. As shared care arrangements become more prevalent, traditional child support arrangements may become less common. Survey …
Factors Associated with the Joint Physical Custody of European Children
Understanding patterns of children’s living arrangements (physical custody) in separated families and the factors related to joint physical custody are crucial as custody patterns have significant implications for the well-being of children and parents. In this study we use the 2021 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey (EU-SILC) to provide new evidence of children’s post-separation living arrangements in Europe. Our sa…
Defining the ‘Resource Unit’ for Poverty Measurement in Complex Contemporary Households: It’s Complicated
Lower-Income Nonresident Fathers' Self-Perceptions About Their Parenting Quality and Relationships With Children
Research on fathering has substantially increased but we still know relatively little about whether and how fathers' own perspectives on their parenting differ across a variety of family situations. We estimate associations between nonresident fathers' family types and nonresident fathers' perceptions of the quality of their parenting and their relationships with their children, using data from the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Dem…
The long-term effects of formal child support
Objective and BackgroundPrevious research shows the benefits of formal child support to children during their childhood; however, the long-term effect of child support receipt on outcomes as adults has not been studied. This inquiry examines whether adults who received formal child support as children have different labor market outcomes than those who did not.MethodWe conducted two sets of analyses with complementary strengths to examine young a…
Maternal satisfaction with joint and sole child physical placement arrangements following separation in Wisconsin and Finland
Families (and sometimes courts) make important decisions regarding child physical custody arrangements post‐separation, and shared parenting arrangements are increasingly common in most developed countries. Shared arrangements may be differentially associated with parental satisfaction, and these associations may vary across countries. Using data from surveys of separated mothers in Wisconsin and Finland, the present study explores this possibili…
Slowing the ‘vicious cycle’: Reducing the interest rate on child support arrears
The amount of accumulated unpaid child support (arrears) owed throughout the United States is over $100 billion. High arrears balances mean that those who owe support may face punitive enforcement actions, those due child support did not receive the money they were owed, and the child support program must devote more attention to enforcing payment of past-due amounts at the expense of enforcing current amounts due, diverting the program’s efforts…
A Research Note on Trends in the Stock and Flow of Child Support Agreements
In this research note, we demonstrate that trends in the likelihood of child support agreements differ by marital history (i.e., never-married vs. ever-married) and by whether measures rely on the stock of families (i.e., all those in which children live apart from a parent) or the flow (i.e., those that include children who newly live apart from a parent) in a given year. While previous research has highlighted difference by marital history, the…
Joint physical custody of children in Europe: A growing phenomenon
Background: Large-scale cross-country comparisons of children’s physical custody (which parent the child lives with after separation) are dated and limited in the age range of children considered. Objective: We document the level of sole and joint physical custody (JPC, both equal and unequal) for children in European countries using data from 2021. Methods: This article uses a new module on the living arrangements of children from the European U…
Child support policy in middle- and low-income countries: Current Approaches and Policy Dilemmas
Little is known about government policies that regulate economic transfers between separated parents (child support) outside of high-income countries. This paper provides the first broad overview of child support policy and its outcomes in 37 middle- and low-income countries. Using a systematic literature review, we provide information on child support policies in these countries, considering institutional arrangements, procedures for determining…
Noncustodial parents, instrumental networks, and child support compliance
Child support systems and government budgets: Thorny policy choices to recover costs
Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA instituted child support agencies in the late 1900s and had some policies that resulted in having lowered governmental expenditures when child support was paid. Building on previous research comparing these four countries, this article examines the extent to which these countries currently use explicit cost recovery policies, implicit policies revealed in programme interactions, and fees. Using data fro…
Do Carrots Work Better than Sticks? Results from the National Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration
Most children in the United States will spend at least part of their childhood living apart from one of their parents; the child support system is designed to ensure that they nonetheless receive financial support. While the system is largely effective when noncustodial parents have substantial regular earnings, many noncustodial parents, including a disproportionate share of those whose children live in poverty, have limited earnings and ability…
Child Support Policy across High-Income Countries: Similar Problems, Different Approaches
We provide an overview of child support policy in high-income countries, highlighting differences in institutional arrangements, the amount of child support due, and the amount of child support received. We show that the United States expects high levels of child support from nonresident parents when compared to other countries, that noncompliance is a problem across countries, and that most European countries deal with nonpayment of child suppor…
Increases in shared custody after divorce in the United States
While a striking rise in shared physical custody after divorce has been observed in Wisconsin and some European countries, the same trend in shared custody has not been documented in US national data
Before and After Tanf: The Economic Well‐Being of Women Leaving Welfare
We use administrative data from Wisconsin to compare employment, earnings, and income outcomes for welfare leavers under early reforms and under the later, more stringent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. We find substantially higher rates of exit in the later period. Later leavers are somewhat more likely to work, but their earnings are lower. We also make a pre‐post comparison of individual employment and income experiences, exam…
Multiple‐Partner Fertility: Incidence and Implications for Child Support Policy
Family complexity that results when adults have children with multiple partners (multiple‐partner fertility) is quite common. It also has important implications for understanding child support outcomes and for designing and evaluating welfare and family policy. Using a unique set of merged administrative data, this article provides the first comprehensive documentation of levels of family complexity among a broad sample of welfare recipients. The…
The Evolution of Family Complexity from the Perspective of Nonmarital Children
We document the incidence and evolution of family complexity from the perspective of children. Following a cohort of firstborn children whose mothers were not married at the time of their birth, we consider family structure changes over the first 10 years of the child’s life—considering both full and half-siblings who are coresidential or who live in another household. We rely on detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin that inclu…
Who gets custody
Changes in the living arrangements of children have implications for social policy and children’s well-being. Understanding who gets custody on divorce—mother, father, or both sharing custody—can also inform our understanding of family organization and the merits of alternative theories of marriage and divorce. We examine physical-custody outcomes among recent Wisconsin divorces in an effort to understand the factors associated with shared custod…
Child Support Compliance among Discretionary and Nondiscretionary Obligors
This article documents patterns and correlates of child support compliance among fathers of welfare recipients in Wisconsin. We introduce the concept of discretionary obligors (because payment results in part from voluntary cooperation) and nondiscretionary obligors (because payment results from routine enforcement mechanisms) to differentiate between fathers with weak versus strong connections to formal employment, and we demonstrate that differ…
Who Gets Custody Now? Dramatic Changes in Children’s Living Arrangements After Divorce
This article reexamines the living arrangements of children following their parents’ divorce, using Wisconsin Court Records, updating an analysis that showed relatively small but significant increases in shared custody in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These changes have accelerated markedly in the intervening years: between 1988 and 2008, the proportion of mothers granted sole physical custody fell substantially, the proportion of parents shari…
Alternative measures of economic success among Tanf participants: Avoiding poverty, hardship, and dependence on public assistance
Current debates about the success of TANF reforms have been obscured by the use of inconsistent indicators of success, as well as by measurement difficulties associated with alternative indicators. This paper considers conceptual and measurement issues associated with three different indicators of economic well‐being: independence from public assistance, having income above the poverty threshold, and freedom from material hardship. Survey and adm…
Maternal re-partnering and new-partner fertility: Associations with nonresident father investments in children
Custodial Fathers: Myths, Realities, and Child Support Policy
Men are increasingly receiving custody of their children, and single-father families with children are growing at a faster rate than even single-mother families.However, many observers still believe that custodial fathers are small in number.Indeed, there are a number of myths concerning custodial fathers, myths that are dispelled by empirical data.The authors examine data from the Current Population Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Parti…
The Regularity of Child Support and Its Contribution to the Regularity of Income
The declining availability of public assistance and increasing reliance on child support as a key income source for single-parent families raise questions about the adequacy and consistency of support. Using detailed Wisconsin administrative records for custodial mothers who obtained a new child support order in 2000, this study examines the regularity of child support receipt and its contribution to the regularity of total income among custodial…
Do High Child Support Orders Discourage Child Support Payments
This article examines the relationships among child support orders, child support payments, and the compliance rate (payments compared to orders). It uses administrative data from Wisconsin, examining 3 years of orders and payments by fathers who had their first order for child support to a particular mother in 2000. Using fixed‐effects models that attempt to control for unobserved factors, the authors find that the burden of orders (i.e., the pr…
Welfare and child support: Complements, not substitutes
In most states, child support paid on behalf of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) participants is used to offset TANF and child support administrative expenditures; this policy primarily benefits taxpayers. In contrast, Wisconsin allowed most custodial parents to keep all support paid on their behalf. This policy, which treats welfare and child support as complements, was evaluated through an experimental design. This paper reports t…
Are There Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Nonmarital Child Support Cases
In this article, we examine the determinants of child support compliance in nonmarital child support cases in Wisconsin by focusing on the father's ability to pay and the stringency of the child support enforcement system. We find that tougher enforcement rules positively affect compliance rates. Higher incomes are associated with higher compliance rates, and lower incomes, with lower rates. The percentage of income that is owed in child support …
Fathers of Children Receiving Welfare: Can They Provide More Child Support
Although a number of current policy initiatives presume that nonresident fathers could provide substantially more income for their (welfare‐attached) children, several factors lead to skepticism. This article uses administrative and survey data to describe the characteristics of fathers of welfare recipients. The results suggest that most of these fathers have limited economic resources and, like the mothers of their children, often face substant…
Family Complexity: Setting the Context
family complexity; multiple-partner fertility; union instability; family change
I'm Not Supporting His Kids: Nonresident Fathers' Contributions Given Mothers' New Fertility
The authors examined whether nonresident fathers provide informal support to their children and whether support stops if their ex-partner goes on to have a child with a new man. A logistic regression analysis of longitudinal survey and administrative data for 434 women who received welfare in Wisconsin showed that fathers are less likely to provide informal support when their ex-partner has a child with a new partner. Alternative models that cont…
Child Support: Responsible Fatherhood and the Quid Pro Quo
Over time, public policy changes have strengthened the private child support system while reducing access to public support-welfare. Given the especially limited availability of public support, nonresident fathers' economic contributions through child support can play an important role in helping children to avoid poverty. In this article, the authors review evidence on nonresident fathers' ability to pay support, provide an overview of the way c…
Who Owes What to Whom? Child Support Policy Given Multiple-Partner Fertility
When parents have children from multiple partners, the resulting complex families challenge conventions concerning parents’ rights and responsibilities. These challenges are particularly salient for child support policies, which articulate parents’ obligations to their children and determine the amount of support due. Data from Wisconsin suggest that complex families are fairly common and that nonresident fathers’ earnings in these families are t…
Reconsidering the increase in father-only families
Previously reported estimates of rapid growth rates among father-only families did not account for cohabitation. An explicit treatment of cohabitation removes about half of the presumed growth. Nevertheless, we find that the number of father-only families grew at more than double the rate of mother-only families during the 1980s. Decomposition analyses show that the largest factor associated with the increase is that fathers now head a greater pr…
Work after welfare: Women's work effort, occupation, and economic well-being
Current welfare reforms attempt to move low-income women with children from reliance on welfare to work. The logic of some current efforts relies on the thesis that employment, even in low-paying jobs, leads eventually to self-sufficiency. With data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors analyzed the relationship between work history and economic success during the first five years after women leave welfare. They found that o…
How Do Welfare Sanctions Work
Journal Article How Do Welfare Sanctions Work? Get access Chi-Fang Wu, PhD, Chi-Fang Wu, PhD assistant professor University of Wisconsin-MadisonUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1207 West Oregon Street, Urbana, IL 61801; e-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Maria Cancian, PhD, Maria Cancian, PhD professor University of Wisconsin-Madison Search for other works by this author on…
Child care subsidy patterns: Are exits related to economic setbacks or economic successes
What Happens When the Amount of Child Support Due Is a Burden? Revisiting the Relationship between Child Support Orders and Child Support Payments
Child support policies typically call for noncustodial fathers to provide their children financial support. However, setting orders too high may be counterproductive, resulting in lower payments and compliance and less regular payments. But how high is too high? Prior research is dated and inconsistent. We reexamine the relationship between the burden of orders and payments, compliance, and regularity. Using fixed-effects models and administrativ…
Increases in shared custody after divorce in the United States
While a striking rise in shared physical custody after divorce has been observed in Wisconsin and some European countries, the same trend in shared custody has not been documented in US national data
Compliance with Child Support Orders in Divorce Cases
This paper examines compliance with child support orders by divorced fathers in Wisconsin. Compliance increases as the income of the father increases, although it falls in the highest income category. The "burden" of awards does not affect compliance unless more than 30 percent of income is owed. More stringent enforcement systems increase compliance. We find that most divorced fathers who are not complying with their orders do not have very low …
Proportional Reinforcement and Extinction of the Conditioned GSR
Disability equivalencies: A logic system for comparison of alternate health programs
Disability equivalencies: a logic system for comparison of alternate health programs. D R MeyerCopyRight https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.61.8.1514 Published Online: August 29, 2011
The potential of child care tax credits to reduce poverty and welfare recipiency
The Effects of Replacing Income Tax Deductions for Children With Children's Allowances: A Microsimulation
All other industrialized countries have some version of a children's allowance, a grant provided to all families based on the number of children they have. In contrast, the United States provides tax deductions for children, which provide the most benefit to the rich and provide no benefit at all to most poor families. The authors argue that a children's allowance could be instituted in this country that would decrease poverty and welfare partici…
Employment creation, poverty alleviation, and the provision of infrastructure: Lessons from the labour-based construction of municipal services in ilinge
The Effects of Alternative Child Support Systems on Blacks, Hispanics, and Non-Hispanic Whites
In this article, we report the results of microsimulations using data from the 1986 Current Population Survey-Child Support Supplement (CPS-CSS). The results show that strengthening private child support enforcement and implementing an assured child support benefit would increase the amount of money going to black, Hispanic, and white custodial families. Enforcement alone redistributes income away from the entire minority community (noncustodial …
Child support and welfare dynamics: Evidence from Wisconsin
This paper provides estimates of the effect of child support on exiting and reentering welfare for a sample of divorced women in Wisconsin. Modest amounts of child support do not have large effects on exiting welfare in this sample. The percentage of women who return to welfare is higher than has been reported previously. Receiving child support significantly decreases the likelihood of returning to welfare
Custodial Fathers: Myths, Realities, and Child Support Policy
Men are increasingly receiving custody of their children, and single-father families with children are growing at a faster rate than even single-mother families.However, many observers still believe that custodial fathers are small in number.Indeed, there are a number of myths concerning custodial fathers, myths that are dispelled by empirical data.The authors examine data from the Current Population Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Parti…
Are There Really Deadbeat Dads? The Relationship between Ability to Pay, Enforcement, and Compliance in Nonmarital Child Support Cases
In this article, we examine the determinants of child support compliance in nonmarital child support cases in Wisconsin by focusing on the father's ability to pay and the stringency of the child support enforcement system. We find that tougher enforcement rules positively affect compliance rates. Higher incomes are associated with higher compliance rates, and lower incomes, with lower rates. The percentage of income that is owed in child support …
Small Change: The Economics of Child Support . Andrea H. Beller , John W. Graham
Is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? Interaction effects of three non-income-tested transfers for families with children
If the government sponsored programs that offered a refundable tax credit for children, national health insurance, and an assured child support benefit to all families with children—poor families as well as nonpoor families—what would happen to poverty and welfare dependency? Using data from the 1987 Survey of Income and Program Participation, the authors simulate the effects of three such programs operating on their own and of all three acting i…
Reconsidering the increase in father-only families
Previously reported estimates of rapid growth rates among father-only families did not account for cohabitation. An explicit treatment of cohabitation removes about half of the presumed growth. Nevertheless, we find that the number of father-only families grew at more than double the rate of mother-only families during the 1980s. Decomposition analyses show that the largest factor associated with the increase is that fathers now head a greater pr…
Changing Policy, Changing Practice: Mothers' Incomes and Child Support Orders
With the increasing numbers of affected by divorce and economic vulnerability after divorce, child support is a critical concern of national policymakers. The efforts to increase child support have included a shift to numerical guidelines for the amount of child support orders. Guidelines generally reflect an income-sharing philosophy, in which support is expected of all nonresident parents, of residentparent resources. We examine Wisconsin divor…
Compliance with Child Support Orders in Divorce Cases
This paper examines compliance with child support orders by divorced fathers in Wisconsin. Compliance increases as the income of the father increases, although it falls in the highest income category. The "burden" of awards does not affect compliance unless more than 30 percent of income is owed. More stringent enforcement systems increase compliance. We find that most divorced fathers who are not complying with their orders do not have very low …
Who gets custody
Changes in the living arrangements of children have implications for social policy and children’s well-being. Understanding who gets custody on divorce—mother, father, or both sharing custody—can also inform our understanding of family organization and the merits of alternative theories of marriage and divorce. We examine physical-custody outcomes among recent Wisconsin divorces in an effort to understand the factors associated with shared custod…
Economic Well-Being Following an Exit from Aid to Families with Dependent Children
Much previous research has focused on how long families receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) before leaving the program and whether and when they return to the program following an exit. Few quantitative studies have looked at broader indicators of the economic well-being of those who have exited AFDC. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to trace poverty status and welfare use in the 5 years following an e…
Patterns of Child Support Compliance in Wisconsin
This paper examines five-year compliance patterns among Wisconsin child support cases that came to court in 1986–88. We find only limited support for the common assumption that compliance with child support orders declines over time: the average percent paid is about .65 during each of the first five years. The most predominant trend is an increasing polarization into groups of nonpayers and full payers. Although we find considerable stability fr…
Estimating a Proposed Family Policy's Effects: Incorporating Labor Supply Responses to an Assured Child Support Benefit
Assured child support benefits are an important component of many proposals to reform the child support system. The authors estimate costs and the likely effects of assured benefits on poverty and welfare participation under two scenarios: with and without incorporating the labor supply changes of custodial parents. They find that in each situation assured benefits will reduce poverty rates and the poverty gap; welfare caseloads and expenditures …
Fathers under Fire: The Revolution in Child Support Enforcement
Fathers under Fire: The Revolution in Child Support Enforcement
Work after welfare: Women's work effort, occupation, and economic well-being
Current welfare reforms attempt to move low-income women with children from reliance on welfare to work. The logic of some current efforts relies on the thesis that employment, even in low-paying jobs, leads eventually to self-sufficiency. With data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors analyzed the relationship between work history and economic success during the first five years after women leave welfare. They found that o…
Before and After Tanf: The Economic Well‐Being of Women Leaving Welfare
We use administrative data from Wisconsin to compare employment, earnings, and income outcomes for welfare leavers under early reforms and under the later, more stringent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. We find substantially higher rates of exit in the later period. Later leavers are somewhat more likely to work, but their earnings are lower. We also make a pre‐post comparison of individual employment and income experiences, exam…
Child Support Compliance among Discretionary and Nondiscretionary Obligors
This article documents patterns and correlates of child support compliance among fathers of welfare recipients in Wisconsin. We introduce the concept of discretionary obligors (because payment results in part from voluntary cooperation) and nondiscretionary obligors (because payment results from routine enforcement mechanisms) to differentiate between fathers with weak versus strong connections to formal employment, and we demonstrate that differ…
Alternative measures of economic success among Tanf participants: Avoiding poverty, hardship, and dependence on public assistance
Current debates about the success of TANF reforms have been obscured by the use of inconsistent indicators of success, as well as by measurement difficulties associated with alternative indicators. This paper considers conceptual and measurement issues associated with three different indicators of economic well‐being: independence from public assistance, having income above the poverty threshold, and freedom from material hardship. Survey and adm…
Fathers of Children Receiving Welfare: Can They Provide More Child Support
Although a number of current policy initiatives presume that nonresident fathers could provide substantially more income for their (welfare‐attached) children, several factors lead to skepticism. This article uses administrative and survey data to describe the characteristics of fathers of welfare recipients. The results suggest that most of these fathers have limited economic resources and, like the mothers of their children, often face substant…
Economics (72 works) · Psychology (67 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (66 works) · Political science (65 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (59 works) · Demographic economics (55 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (53 works) · Child support (50 works) · Sociology (38 works) · Economic growth (34 works)