ALLOCATIVE EFFICIENCY IN PUBLIC BUDGET DISTRIBUTION The Case of Massachusetts Child Support Payments

An evaluation was conducted of a federally funded demonstration child support-enforcement project. The basic research question was whether a multifaceted program of judicial and public awareness efforts and operational procedures administered to the Massachusetts District Courts was effective in establishing and advocating the use of wage-assignment legislation as an effective collection technique in child support cases. A pre- and posttreatment time-series design compared District Courts to relevant compari-son groups on a number of dependent measures. The results of the evaluation study suggest that making clerical-level staff available to approximately one-fourth of the Massachusetts District Courts significantly stabilized total child support collections for AFDC families. It was estimated that the additional child support payments collected in Massachusetts as a result of the treatment program administered to the District Courts represents almost 2 % of the total annual child support collections for AFDCfamilies in Massachusetts. Applying this net percentage gain to forecasted total child support collections for AFDC families in FY82 resulted in a forecasted net additional collections of slightly more than $11 million for the next fiscal year, 1982. The widespread lack of financial support of low-income children1 by parents living apart from the family unit (absent parents) prompted Congress to create Title IV-D of the Social Security Act in 1974. Title IV-D underscored the right of dependent children to the financial support of their parents. It was designed to help the custodial parent and the dependent children locate the absent parent, establish paternity, as well as establish and enforce child support payments. Th