Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

A recent study (Nepomnyachy, Magnuson, and Berger, 2012) finds that informal child support is positively associated with children’s cognitive skills at age 5, but paradoxically formal child support payments is negatively associated with children’s behavior. However, this paper does not account for selection into formal child support. Our paper builds on this finding by estimating the effects of formal child support on children’s academic achievement and behavior, after accounting for the probability that payment is made formally, using propensity score matching methods.