Journal of Labor Economics 2025
The Effect of Child Support on Fathers’ Labor Supply
open access
Abstract
Child support frequently increases with the noncustodial fathers' incomes. I study the effect on their work incentives. For identification, I exploit the end of child support when the children involved reach emancipation age. Empirically, child support paid drops to near zero on emancipation; fathers correspondingly increase their work hours and annual earnings. Formally, each 10 percentage point increase in the child support rate leads to an 8–11 percent decrease in labor supply conditional on working. I find weaker extensive margin responses. In a structural model, I map these estimates to the intertemporal elasticity of labor supply (Frisch elasticity).
- DOI
- 10.1086/740192
- Language
- en
- Sources
- semanticscholar openalex crossref