Child support agencies have incentives to find innovative ways to use staff time more efficiently in pursuing child support collections.  However, given limited resources, agencies need to understand whether the interventions in which they plan to invest are effective. 

This paper will discuss two experimental tests of interventions designed to increase child support collections from non-custodial parents from whom, experience has shown, it is often difficult to collect. A team of academic and applied researchers has worked with child support agency officials in Washington State to develop experimental research designs, monitor implementation of the interventions, and measure impacts.

The two interventions being tested reflect the general need for child support agencies to increase collections and maximize their performance on behalf of custodial parents and their children as well as with respect to federal performance standards. They vary in the amount of resources and staff time involved as well as in the point in the “life cycle” of a case at which the interventions are aimed.  The primary objective of both interventions is to increase the amount and consistency of payments.

The first intervention is the creation of a special unit of caseworkers dedicated to intensively pursuing collections in arrears-only cases with exclusively state-owed debt.  Collections from these arrears-only cases go directly to the state as reimbursements for public assistance received by custodial parents.  According to the State’s estimates, this unit is expected to be cost effective in about 18 months. The paper will provide findings from the implementation study of the staffing, training, and initial months of the special unit’s work, as well as quantitative results on the impacts after 20 months.  There are 3,355 non-custodial parents in the treatment group and 2,000 in the control group. 

The second intervention is testing the effect of initiating clear and regular communication with noncustodial parents. Currently, noncustodial parents in Washington State receive written notification of their child support obligations when the order is established, but in most cases they do not receive a routine reminder to pay each month. The intervention sends regular billing statements to new noncustodial parents who have not had prior support orders and are not subject to wage withholding. We test the hypothesis that regular statements increase the regularity and amount of payment. Unlike the special arrears-only unit that relies on intensive case work and a substantial investment on the State’s part, generation and distribution of the monthly statements is largely automated and relatively low cost. The paper will provide impact estimates after 16 months of operation. There are slightly more than 1,000 noncustodial parents in both the treatment and control groups.