Full Citation
Title: Engaging Absent Fathers: Lessons from Paternity Establishment Programs
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2012
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, behavior, and well-being. The empirical analysis is compatible with a conceptual framework in which fathers, who are heterogeneousin quality, must make transfers to mothers in exchange for rights to their children. However, because maternal utility is more sensitive to father quality in marriage thanoutside marriage, mothers trade off the benefits of paternal transfers with the costs of interacting with lower-than-desired quality partners in marriage. Following a decrease in the cost of paternity establishment, more mothers expect partial transfers outside marriage and thus choose to remain unmarried, thereby raising the marriage threshold in father quality. Using variation in the timing of IHVPE initiation across states and years, I show that IHVPE programs increase paternity establishment rates by 38percent, and reduce the likelihood of parental marriage post-childbirth. The decrease in marriage leads to positive selection into the samples of both married and unmarriedfathers, providing evidence for an increase in the marriage threshold in father quality. Accounting for selection out of marriage, there is some indication of a net reductionin paternal transfers: private health insurance provision for children declines, while maternal labor supply increases. On the whole, measures of child welfare such as total family income and child mental and physical health are unaffected, although childrens access to preventative care declines. I perform numerous robustness checks to support the validity of my findings.
User Submitted?: No
Authors: Rossin-Slater, Maya
Conference Name: Population Association of America
Publisher Location: San Francisco, CA
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Family and Marriage
Countries: