Teenage Delinquency: The Role of Child Support Payments and Father’s Visitation

There is longstanding evidence that children raised by single parents are more likely to become sexually active, commit illegal acts and smoke at young ages. A number of past studies have also shown that youth outcomes are better among children whose mothers receive support payments from the non-custodial father. What has not been determined is whether the better youth outcomes are the result of higher maternal income or more visitation/involvement by the non-custodial father. If non-custodial father’s who pay child support are also more likely to be involved in their children’s lives, then what may look like an income effect may actually be, at least partially, a ‘father effect’. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and the NLSY Child Supplement, we find that youth with absent fathers are more likely to partake in deviant activities. Somewhat surprisingly, we find very little evidence that child support receipt and father visitation effects youth behavior. The one exception is that youth who receive child support but rarely see their father are more likely than youth from other family structures to have sex and commit crimes at young ages