Full Citation
Title: Engaging Absent Fathers: Lessons from Paternity Establishment Programs
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2011
ISBN:
ISSN:
DOI:
NSFID:
PMCID:
PMID:
Abstract: This paper provides the first comprehensive analysis of the causal effects of in-hospital voluntary paternity establishment (IHVPE) programs on paternity establishment rates and consequent family structure and behavior. Using variation in the timing of IHVPE program initiation across states and years, I first show that IHVPE programs increase paternity establishment rates by 40 percent. Then, using data from the March and April Current Population Survey Supplements, I show that IHVPE programs reduce the likelihood of marriage post-childbirth. The decrease in marriage leads to an increase in the average characteristics of both married and unmarried fathers. Accounting for selection out of marriage, private health insurance provision for children declines, while maternal labor supply increases. The results from my analysis are consistent with a framework where fathers, who are heterogeneous in quality, must make transfers to mothers in exchange for rights to their children. Maternal utility is more sensitive to father quality in marriage than outside marriage, so a decrease in the cost of paternity establishment induces more mothers to choose higher partial transfers outside marriage over full transfers and interaction with lower-than-desired quality fathers in marriage. I provide evidence that the timing of IHVPE program implementation is uncorrelated with numerous state time-varying characteristics and that the results are not driven by pre-existing trends. My results are robust to the inclusion of numerous controls for maternal, child, and state time-varying characteristics, state and year fixed effects, state-specific time trends, and across severalspecifications, methods, and data sets.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Rossin-Slater, Maya
Publisher: Columbia University
Data Collections: IPUMS CPS
Topics: Family and Marriage
Countries: