In 1997, the state of Wisconsin decided to experiment with the way it handled child support payments made to welfare recipients. In previous years, under the Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) program, recipients who also received child support payments from a non-custodial parent were required to relinquish the bulk of what they received in child support to the state — states only “passed through” the first $50 of child support in a given month.
The federal welfare-reform bill (formally known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) of the previous year gave states room to experiment with and set their own policies. The majority of states decided to eliminate the pass-through entirely and simply retain all child support payments to welfare recipients, but Wisconsin instead implemented and rigorously evaluated a temporary, experimental full pass-through and full disregard program, in which recipients retained all of the child support paid to them and their full welfare benefits.
[For more of this story, written by Dwyer Gunn, go to https://psmag.com/wisconsins-g...93288ae22#.w1pt8mwwr]
Comments (0)