Child Support Payments and Father/Child Contact in Fragile Families: Establishing a Causal Path

Lenna Nepomnyaschy, Columbia University

Prior research has determined that fathers who pay child support have more contact with their children; however, due to the endogeneity between payments and contact, the direction of these effects has not been conclusively untangled. This paper will use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal survey of unwed parents in 20 large U.S. cities, to assess the impact of child support payments on father/child contact approximately one year after the child’s birth. The Fragile Families data contain measures of fathers’ commitment to their children, attitudes toward parenting, and new family responsibilities, characteristics which were previously considered unobservable. Additionally, fathers’ payments will be instrumented using indicators for the strength of child support enforcement in the state. This analysis will attempt to establish a more precise estimate of the effect of payments on visitation as well as shed light on the magnitude of bias in prior research.