	Introduction

The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program is a federal/state program that is designed to promote self-sufficiency of families in which one of the biological parents is living outside of the home. The program achieves its mission by trying to ensure that noncustodial parents meet their financial responsibility to their children. The CSE program provides seven major services on behalf of children: parent location, paternity establishment, establishment of child support orders, review and modification of support orders, collection of support payments, distribution of support payments, and establishment and enforcement of medical support. It began as a welfare cost-recovery program, but the Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984 ( P.L. The CSE program is estimated to handle about 60% of all child support cases; the remaining cases are handled by private attorneys, by collection agencies, or through mutual agreements between the parents. All of the data in this report are exclusively CSE program data. The underlying data for Figure 2 (shown in Table A-2 ) indicate that AFDC cases comprised 85% of the CSE caseload in FY1978, but TANF dropped to about 10% of the caseload in FY2015. The expectation is that as child support becomes a more consistent and stable income source/support, former TANF families will not have to return to the TANF rolls, and families that never resorted to the TANF program will never have to do so. Figure 5 shows the total (national) number of CSE cases with a child support order established during the period FY1991-FY2015. As mentioned earlier, in FY1999 OCSE started reporting data in categories designated as current assistance (i.e., child support collected on behalf of families that are currently receiving TANF cash assistance or Title IV-E foster care payments), former assistance (i.e., families that used to receive TANF assistance, AFDC benefits, or Title IV-E foster care), and never received assistance (i.e., families that never received AFDC, TANF, or Title IV-E foster care) rather than TANF and non-TANF. Interestingly, child support collections continued to increase even though the CSE caseload declined. During the period, the CSE caseload declined 7%, from 15.8 million to 14.7 million (see Table A-2 ). In FY2015, the CSE program collected only 20% of child support obligations for which it had responsibility if arrearage payments are taken into account (otherwise, 65%). It shows that in FY2015, $5.26 in child support was collected for every dollar spent on CSE activities (i.e., national average). During the 38-year period from FY1978 through FY2015, CSE collections increased 8-fold to $28.6 billion (adjusting for inflation), program expenditures increased almost 6-fold to $5.7 billion (adjusting for inflation), the number of children whose paternity was established or acknowledged (through the CSE program) increased 13-fold to 1.5 million, the number of CSE cases with child support orders almost doubled to 12.6 million (from FY1991-FY2015), and the CSE caseload increased 3-fold to 14.7 million. CSE data indicate that the program is collecting child support for a greater number and higher percentage of families, but the average monthly child support payment for families that actually received one is still relatively small, $264 per month in FY2015. Overall, about 7% of CSE collections obtained in FY2015 were used to reimburse the states and the federal government for monthly TANF benefits paid to current and former TANF families. This means that in FY2015, 93% of CSE collections ($26.6 billion) went to the families on the CSE rolls.
The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program is a federal/state program that is designed to promote self-sufficiency of families in which one of the biological parents is living outside of the home. The program achieves its mission by trying to ensure that noncustodial parents meet their financial responsibility to their children. The CSE program provides several services on behalf of children including parent location, paternity establishment, establishment of child support orders, and collection and distribution of child support payments.
In FY1978, families who received cash welfare comprised 85% of the CSE caseload and 45% of CSE collections. By FY2015, they comprised only 10.5% of the CSE caseload and 5% of CSE collections. Using a more recent classification of the CSE caseload, in FY2015 current Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) families and Title IV-E foster care families comprised 10.5% of the CSE caseload and 3% of collections, and former TANF families and Title IV-E foster care families comprised 42.8% of the CSE caseload and 31% of collections. Families that had never received TANF or Title IV-E foster care comprised 46.7% of the CSE caseload and almost 66% of collections. This reflects the underlying premise of the CSE program: as child support becomes a more consistent and stable income source/support, former cash welfare families will not have to return to the cash welfare rolls, and families that never resorted to cash welfare will not have to do so.
In FY2015, the CSE caseload was 14.7 million families. The CSE program is estimated to handle about 60% of all child support cases; the remaining cases are handled by private attorneys, by collection agencies, or through mutual agreements between the parents. All of the data in this report are exclusively CSE program data.
Before a state can enforce/collect a child support obligation, paternity must be determined and a child support order must be established. During the period FY2011-FY2015, the number of paternities established or acknowledged fell 12% nationwide, from nearly 1.7 million to 1.5 million. During that same period, the number of cases with a child support order established dropped 1% nationwide, from 12.8 million to 12.6 million.
The CSE program is characterized by paradoxes. It collected only 20% of the child support obligations for which it had responsibility in FY2015 (i.e., 65% of all current collections and 7% of obligations that were past due). However, during the period FY1999-FY2015 child support payments collected by CSE agencies increased 80% nationally, from $15.9 billion to $28.6 billion. Child support collections have continued to increase even though the CSE caseload has declined. Although the number and percentage of CSE cases with collections have been increasing over time, the average monthly child support payment for families that actually receive one has been decreasing and is relatively small, amounting to $264 per month in FY2015. Although the national cost of the CSE program was $5.7 billion in FY2015, $5.26 in child support was collected for every $1 spent on CSE activities. The CSE program began as a welfare cost-recovery program; however, in FY2015 93% of CSE collections went to CSE families (rather than the federal government or the states); the comparable figure in FY1979 was 56%.