Child Support and Material Hardship Among Custodial-Mother Families in Colombia
Child support reduces income poverty among custodial-mother families in a wide range of countries. Less is known about the role of child support in avoiding material hardship, especially in the context of less developed nations. The inadequate consumption of very basic goods, such as food and housing, is a critical dimension of poverty that may be directly related with child wellbeing independent of income. The purpose of this paper is to examine material hardship experiences of custodial-mother families in Colombia and the extent to which child support receipt is helping to prevent these events. Specific aims are: (1) to calculate the percentage of custodial-mother families experiencing material hardship, and (2) to estimate the association between child support receipt and material hardship.
DATA AND METHODS
Data come from the 2008 Quality of Life Survey (QLS), a Colombian household survey that has been conducted about every other year since 1997. In addition to standard information on family demography, the QLS provides comprehensive data on food security and housing conditions that can be used for this study. The survey also includes two questions on child support (receipt and amount received). My sample has 3,359 custodial-mother families, of which 2,616 are single-mother families, and 743 are repartnered-mother families.
I address the first specific aim by calculating the percentage of custodial-mother families experiencing three different types of material hardship: food insecurity (i.e. children skipped meal or not eat for a whole day due to lack of money), housing problems (i.e. home is close to a garbage dump or sewer), and utility disconnection (i.e. household had the service turned off due to non-payment), as well as one composite measure of experiencing any of these three material hardships. In order to address the second specific aim, I use a series of probit regressions to estimate the likelihood of experiencing any of the three material hardships on child support receipt. I use extensive covariates to try to control for as many measured differences between families who received and do not receive child support. Models are estimated separately for the full sample and for those families in poverty.
RESULTS, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
One-third of custodial-mother families experience material hardship. When I look at measures of material hardship separately, housing problems and utility disconnection are less frequent among custodial-mother families (13% and 1.5% respectively) than food insecurity (21%). Multivariate analyses show that families receiving child support are five percentage points less likely to experience material hardship. For those living in poverty, child support reduces the likelihood of experiencing material hardship by eight percentage points. These results suggest that child support helps to prevent material hardship among custodial-mother families in Colombia. Policies that increase child support receipt in countries like Colombia are likely to positively affect dimensions of child wellbeing such as food security.