Today, child support enforcement is an issue for more American families than ever before. The number of out-of-wedlock births and divorces has escalated in recent years, and it is estimated about half of American children will spend at least some time in single-parent families. Many of these single-parent families, particularly those headed by young mothers, are at risk of welfare dependency. Child support is critical to these families’ self-sufficiency. In the last 5 years, more and more single-parent families have sought government assistance from the Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which requires recipients to cooperate with the child support enforcement (CSE) program. In addition, an increasing number of single-parent families not receiving AFDC have voluntarily sought CSE’s help in obtaining child support from noncustodial parents. But in 1992, according to data reported by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), only about 19 percent of the cases in the CSE program received any child support payments. In 1975, in response to the growth in the numbers of families receiving AFDC, the Congress created the national CSE program. The federal OCSE was created to monitor and help develop existing state and local child support enforcement programs. Child support collected for families receiving AFDC was to be returned to the government; child support collected for non-AFDC families would help these families avoid a need for cash assistance from the government. Over the years, the Congress steadily expanded CSE program enforcement tools, program requirements, and federal funding to states. In 1992, the federal government paid $1.7 billion to states in matching and other funds to serve a caseload of about 15 million families—8.7 million of whom received AFDC. Because of his concerns, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal Services, Post Office and Civil Service of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs asked us to review the CSE program to determine how the federal government could improve services to the states and the families who depend on state CSE activities. Our review focused on (1)whether the CSE program has the essential management tools in place at the federal level that a program needs to fulfill its mission; (2) how well the federal office, OCSE, has fulfilled its role in fostering the development of state CSE programs; and (3) what state CSE programs are doing to overcome barriers hampering CSE efforts. In addition, we examined implications of welfare reform proposals and the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA) for the CSE program. Child support is a parental responsibility. However, because of the growing number of parents who fail to assume this responsibility, the Congress created the national CSE program in 1975 and significantly amended it in 1984 and 1988. The program’s purpose is to strengthen existing state and local efforts to find noncustodial parents, establish paternity, obtain support orders, and collect support payments. Today, the program serves two populations: families receiving AFDC and those who do not. Although the services provided are essentially the same, collections are handled differently for the two groups, with a portion of the AFDC collections being returned to the state and federal governments and non-AFDC collections going directly to the families. Increases in both groups have caused caseloads to climb, and the service needs of both groups have become increasingly complex. When two people, whether married or not, have a baby, they incur an obligation to provide for their child. When parents live apart, the parent not living with and providing day-to-day care for the child (the noncustodial parent) is expected to help the other parent (the custodial parent) provide for the child. Although children are entitled to support from parents who live apart, a legally binding document—a separation agreement or a support order—is needed to establish the appropriate amount of financial support and make the payment enforceable on the noncustodial parent. If the parents were married at the time of the child’s birth, a support order is usually established when the parents separate or divorce. If the parents were not married when their child was born, the legal presumption of paternity conferred by marriage is lacking, and a permanent support order cannot be established or enforced on either parent until there is a legal determination of paternity. Paternity is established in either of two ways: (1) through voluntary acknowledgment by the father or (2) if contested, through determination based on evidence such as scientific (genetic testing) and personal testimony. In such cases, paternity establishment confers on children the legal rights and privileges that a child born within a marriage has. Among them are rights to inheritance, medical and life insurance benefits, social security, and possibly veteran’s benefits. Before the national CSE program, federal and state governments became involved in child support enforcement primarily through the AFDC program, which provided welfare benefits to children who had inadequate parental financial support. In 1950, the first relevant federal legislation required welfare agencies to notify appropriate law enforcement officials when AFDC was furnished to a child who had been abandoned by a parent. Since 1968, federal statutes pertaining to the AFDC program have specifically required states to have programs for establishing paternity and obtaining support for children who receive AFDC. By 1975, an alarming rise in welfare costs resulting from out-of-wedlock birth rates and parental desertion as well as a growing demand to relieve taxpayers of the financial burden of supporting these families prompted the Congress to create the national CSE program as title IV-D of the Social Security Act. The Congress believed government welfare expenditures could be reduced, and to some extent prevented, by recouping AFDC benefits from noncustodial parents’ child support payments. In addition, the Congress believed that earlier enforcement of child support obligations for families not receiving AFDC could help prevent these families from needing government support. The national CSE program incorporated the already existing state programs. Families who receive AFDC, and families who do not, enter the CSE program in different ways; and the child support payments CSE collects for them are distributed differently. A mother who requests AFDC for her child is required as a condition of eligibility to assign her rights to child support to the government and to cooperate with the CSE program in locating and identifying the father of the child. If the child support that CSE collects for an AFDC family does not, together with family income, make the family ineligible for AFDC, then all but $50 of the monthly support payment goes to the state and federal governments in proportion to their AFDC assistance to the family. The family continues to receive its full monthly AFDC grant plus the first $50 of the support payment. If the family does not receive AFDC, all the child support collected goes directly to the family. Parents who do not receive AFDC are under no obligation to establish paternity or to use CSE services to collect child support. They do so, if at all, voluntarily. Between 1980 and 1992, the nationwide CSE caseload grew 180 percent, from 5.4 million to 15.2 million cases. Part of that growth stemmed from the increase in the number of single-parent families receiving AFDC. The average monthly number rose more than 1 million in the past 5 years, increasing from nearly 3.6 million families in 1989 to just over 4.6 million in 1993. The larger portion of the CSE caseload increase, however, was in non-AFDC cases, which grew from 16 to 43 percent of the caseload during this period. In fiscal year 1992, there were 8.7 million AFDC cases and 6.5 million non-AFDC cases. Figure 1.1 shows the increase in the CSE caseload from fiscal year 1980 through 1992. Today, the CSE caseload is more difficult to serve than in the earlier years because there are more young, unwed parents. Various studies indicate that these cases usually require more services and are more difficult to successfully serve than those involving married or formerly married parents. For example, cases involving unwed parents require paternity establishment, which may be contested rather than acknowledged voluntarily. Also, unwed parents are usually less able and less willing than married or formerly married parents to pay child support. Such parents are generally younger and have less education and earning capacity. They are likely to be unemployed or unemployable and have little or no income with which to pay support—some are still in high school. In addition, some unwed parents are not aware of or do not fully understand the parental responsibilities that CSE agencies try to enforce. The growing size and complexity of the CSE caseload reflect major changes in demographic characteristics of the American family. High rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock birth have resulted in more children living in single-parent households. For example, the number of births to unmarried mothers increased 82 percent between 1980 and 1991. During the same period, the proportion of out-of-wedlock births rose from 18.4 to 29.5 percent of all births. U.S. Bureau of the Census data indicate that there were 9.8 million custodial mothers aged 18 years and older in 1990—39 percent more than in 1979, the first year for which this information was available. The increasingly difficult-to-serve nature of the CSE caseload and the links between nonpayment of child support, poverty, and increases in families receiving AFDC benefits are underscored by socioeconomic statistics. In 1989, according to U.S. Census data, 62 percent of all custodial mothers did not receive child support payments, largely because they lacked support orders. In that same year, 32 percent of all custodial mothers were living below the poverty threshold, and three-quarters of them had not received child support.