| The family has undergone marked changes over the past 50 years, evolving from a nuclear and sometimes intergenerational structure to fractured, blended, and unconventional forms. These changes have affected the economic lives of men, women, and children as roles and responsibilities have been disrupted and redefined. This study reveals significant differences in men's and women's economic behaviors in response to alterations in family structure and related transformations of statutory and common law.;Child-support noncompliance has been an ongoing problem, leaving tens of millions of women and children in poverty and prompting several policy changes over the decades to help define and enforce parents' economic obligations to their children not in their full custody. Yet policymakers have failed to anticipate the full range of parents' behavioral reactions as governments seek to make them responsible. Instead of enforcing accountability, some programs have opened new avenues for avoiding obligations. As a result, child-support compliance rates have been only nominally affected by policy. Labor-supply rates have changed substantially and significantly, however.;In three related analyses, this dissertation examines the effects of no-fault divorce, welfare policies, child-support enforcement, and joint custody on labor supply and child-support compliance. These policies' effects explain the behavior of those non-altruistic parents who seek to avoid financial responsibility by gaming joint-custody rules and through their decisions about how and how much to work. First, an analysis of labor supply examines parents' decisions about work over more than 50 years, explicating work patterns in light of policy changes. The study controls for sex, marital status, parental status, wages, and other demographic and economic variables. In addition, a meta-analysis examines child-support compliance in the context of obligors' ability and willingness to pay and how compulsory policies affect their behavior. Finally, a comparative analysis of descriptive statistics identifies key differences in a selection of factors measuring the ability and willingness to pay in the context of legal compulsion and demographic attributes and how these relate to compliance. |
