A note on the antipoverty effectiveness of child support among mother-onlyfamilies

The Current Population Survey is used to examine the antipoverty effectiven ess of child support, social insurance, and welfare among mother-only famil ies in 1995. Child support brought about 6-7 percent of pretransfer poor mo ther-only families over the poverty line, an effect similar to that of soci al insurance and welfare. A brief trend analysis shows that child support's antipoverty effectiveness has been growing. Some potential reasons why chi ld support's effect is still so small in the face of substantial changes in child support policy are hypothesized.