Can the Family Support Act put some life back into deadbeat dads? An analysis of child-support guidelines, award rates, and levels

Federal legislation mandates the use of child-support guidelines to improve adequacy and horizontal equity of child-support awards, Using state guidel ine formulas, and a sample of women drawn from the NLSY we compare the effe cts Of guidelines on children born out of wedlock versus children whose par ents divorced or separated Our analyses indicate that guidelines increase t he probability of child-support awards for children born out of wedlock, Gu idelines also reduce variation in awards by eliminating outliers, not by eq ualizing awards across the entire distribution, Awards for high-income divo rced or separated fathers fall substantially below the guideline amount.