F&F: Does Harsh Child Support Enforcement Work?

Article here. Excerpt:

'The United States has spent large amounts of money and employed draconian tactics to collect child support for almost 25 years. Have these policies been effective? And at what price?

In the late 1980s, the federal government passed a law requiring each state to develop a formula that would dictate the amount of child support ordered in most cases. The formula, called the Child Support Guidelines, was supposed to be based on actual costs of raising children, although we know this has not been the case. The federal law also required each state to establish laws, policies, and procedures to maximize the number of cases in which a child support order was established, and to enforce child support collection.
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These results show that from 1995 through 2009, intensive efforts to increase the collection of child support have had little effect. The data from 2009 shows that economic factors are more important in determining compliance than enforcement of child support orders. In other words, when fathers have the money, they mostly pay it. (Of course, this has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt in numerous careful studies).'