The Impact of Non-Custodial Parents' Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Unemployment on Child Support Compliance

Purpose:  Millions of children live in single-parent households that rely on financial support from the non-custodial parent (NCP).  Less than half of custodial parents (CPs) receive full child support and almost a third of CPs and their children live below the poverty line—double the rate of the total population (US Census).  Understanding what factors contribute to child support non-compliance can guide efforts to increase economic stability and well-being for children in single-parent households.

A primary contributing factor for failure to pay child support is unemployment, but unemployment among NCPs has not been adequately explored.  Mental health and substance abuse problems negatively impact the ability to secure and maintain employment.  The purpose of this study is to explore the association between NCPs’ mental health, substance use, and child support payment compliance and to examine if unemployment mediated the relationship between these variables.

Methods:  A convenience sample of 633 NCPs were surveyed about a range of mental health and substance use problems and employment status.  Mental health and substance use problems were determined by several psychometrically sound and widely used self-report inventories (PHQ-2 for depressive symptoms; GAD-7 for generalized anxiety symptoms; Mini-SPIN for social anxiety symptoms; ASSIST for substance abuse). Participants were recruited at a court office responsible for child support collection for seven Michigan counties. Surveys were matched with state child support payment information, and NCPs were categorized as compliant (45.8%) as defined by the federal standard of paying 80% of their child support obligation, or non-compliant (54.2%). 

Logistic regression examined if mental health and substance abuse problems predicted payment non-compliance while controlling for employment status, as well as examining interaction and mediation effects.

Results:  Preliminary bivariate analyses revealed that there were significant associations between symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, and social anxiety, therefore a single dichotomous mental health variable was created to reduce the effects of multicollinearity in later analyses.  To explore if mental health and substance abuse predicted payment compliance, the mental health composite variable and substance abuse variable were entered into logistic regression with payment compliance as the dependent variable, while also controlling for employment status.  Substance abuse was not a significant predictor.  The presence of poor mental health predicted significantly lower odds of payment compliance (OR=.52, 95% CI=.36, .77, p<0.01).  The interactions of mental health, substance abuse, and employment were not significant.  The analyses revealed that poor mental health was partially mediated by unemployment.  

Implications:  This is the first study that has explored the relationship between NCPs’ mental health, substance abuse, employment status, and child support compliance.  These findings provide preliminary evidence that mental health problems may contribute to unemployment and child support non-compliance among NCPs.  Future research is needed to further explore the relationship between mental health, substance abuse and child support payment compliance.  If this relationship is confirmed in other studies, interventions aimed at improving mental and substance use-related barriers to employment could be developed to improve employment status and child support compliance for NCPs, thereby improving children’s economic stability and well-being.