The Impact of Cost-Recovery Child Support Orders on Foster Care Trajectories

Background

Many public policies in the United States support children and families while enforcing standards for parents' economic and caregiving responsibilities. Among the systems that most directly regulate parental behavior, the child support and child welfare systems interact in consequential but understudied ways. When a child enters foster care in Wisconsin, their custodial mother may be required to pay child support to the state to offset placement costs. These cost-recovery child support orders affect a substantial share of foster care families, yet despite recent federal guidance advising states to limit their use, few jurisdictions have adjusted their policies. This paper updates Cancian et al. (2017) with new causal estimates of the effects of such orders on children's foster care trajectories, with direct implications for ongoing efforts to better align child support and child welfare systems in the interest of families.

Data/Methods

Using data from the Wisconsin Administrative Data Core (WADC) spanning 2004 to 2019, we focus on Wisconsin mothers with at least one child under 15 who were custodial parents prior to their child's placement in foster care (between June 2004 and June 2016), and for whom the child's father was identified. We examine variation in children's foster care trajectories over three to five years post-removal as a function of whether their mother and/or any father of their children was assigned a cost-recovery child support order. To produce causal estimates, we employ an instrumental variables strategy that exploits substantial within- and between-county variation in the proportion of foster care cases subject to cost-recovery orders across Wisconsin counties over a 12-year period, ranging from 0% to approximately 80%. This variation is uncorrelated with county demographics or child welfare caseloads, suggesting that it reflects county-specific practices rather than systematic differences in family need or risk. Outcomes include foster care duration and the probability of exiting to reunification or another permanent placement.

Results

Cost-recovery child support orders substantially extend the length of time children spend in foster care, with the presence of such orders roughly doubling average foster care duration and reducing the likelihood of reunification by approximately 87 percentage points. Effects are largest during the first 12 months in care and remain substantial but attenuate modestly thereafter.

Conclusions and Implications

Placing financial demands on mothers with children in foster care has a profound negative influence on the length of time children spend in care and on family reunification, challenging both the efficacy and fairness of cost-recovery practices. These findings affirm that cost-recovery child support orders typically delay reunification, thereby contradicting the best interests of children, families, agencies, and taxpayers in most cases. They lend support to recent federal guidance to curtail such orders, and have direct implications for policy efforts to align the child welfare and child support systems in ways that better serve families. The study's reliance on administrative data and an instrumental variables design may not capture the full complexity of family dynamics that influence foster care outcomes, suggesting the need for further research to understand these processes more fully.