Divorced Dads Shattering
The Myths
Sanford L. Braver P.H.D. and
Diane O'Connel
Order This Book Here at Amazon............
ISBN 087477862X
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 21:33:14 -0800 (PST)
From: acfclist@acfc.org (ACFC Website)
To: acfclist@svr2.marketrends.net
Subject: ACFC: Give "Dead-Broke Dads" A Break
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Thanks to Frank Lindley for sending us the following.
ACFC
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http://www.ncpa.org/iss/wel/2002/pd022202d.html
National Center for Policy Analysis
Opinion: Give "Dead-Broke Dads" A Break
Daily Policy Digest
Welfare Issues / Child Support
Friday, February 22, 2002
The notion that "divorced or unmarried fathers make out like
bandits,
leaving women and children in the dust," is based on faulty
research,
says
Cathy Young of Reason magazine.
In her 1985 book, "The Divorce Revolution," Lenore
Weitzman
claimed
women's standard of living drops 73 percent after divorce, while
men's
rises 42 percent, based on a 1977 study. But that oft-quoted
statistic
was
subsequently debunked.
* In 1996 another scholar found a huge error in Weitzman's
computations,
although the revised data still yielded a 10 percent increase in
men's
living standards and a 27 percent decline in women's.
* But since 1977, women's earnings have risen and child
support
collections have improved.
* Thus, in his 1999 book "Divorced Dads: Shattering the
Myths,"
Arizona
State University researcher Sanford Braver found that among
typical
divorced couples with two children, both parents' living
standards
decline
slightly.
In reality, most noncustodial fathers behind in their child
support
payments are unemployed or unskilled laborers. But as the
government
has
ratcheted up child support enforcement, some impoverished fathers
have
been jailed.
* One study found that among fathers with no employment problems,
5
percent paid nothing and 81 percent paid in full; among seasonal
or
sometime unemployed workers, 45 percent paid in full and over a
third
paid
nothing.
* Urban Institute scholar Elaine Sorensen has reported that only
4
percent
of fathers are able to get a judge to reduce their child support
payments
when their earnings drop by more than 15 percent, and when they
do,
it
takes up to six months -- while arrearages mount.
President Bush wants payments by noncustodial fathers whose
children
are
on welfare to go directly to the family rather than a
government
bureaucracy, believing the arrangement will help involve fathers
in
their
children's lives.
Source: Cathy Young (Reason magazine), "New look at
'deadbeat
dads,'"
Boston Globe, February 11, 2002.
For text
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/042/oped/New_look_at_deadbeat_dads_
+.shtml
[ --or--
http://reason.com/cy/cy021302.shtml ]
For more on Child Support
http://www.ncpa.org/iss/wel/
Copyright © 2002 National Center for Policy Analysis - All
rights
reserved.
NCPA Home: http://www.ncpa.org/
===
At NCPA, two excellent articles from 1996:
Dads Not So Dead-Beat
http://www.ncpa.org/pi/welfare/wel10a.html
NCPA, Summer 96
Big Daddy / Can the feds support child support?
http://reason.com/9606/Col.BRIAN.shtml
by Brian Doherty -- Reason, Jun 96
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