Bobert, I think you are overgeneralizing too much in your statements about child support and poverty. More than half of non-custodial parents of children on welfare also have incomes below the federal poverty line. (See http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-05-99-00392.pdf for a 2002 report regarding this from the Inspector General's office. You will need to scroll down to find the appropriate report and section).

While collection efforts and successes by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) vary from State to State and County to County, in most places they go after child support for children on welfare quite agressively these days. Through the auspices of the federal OCSE, State OCSE's have many more tools than they did in the 80's to both locate non-custodial parents and to garnish wages and tax returns.

The main problem is this; You can't blood out of a turnip.

Additionally, when OCSE develops and collects child support for a family on welfare, the child support goes to the public assistance agency first to reimburse government for some or all of the amount of public assistance that has been paid to the family. Any arrearages paid by the absent parent are applied first to past public assistance paid to his (or her) children. A majority of these absent parents do not and cannot pay enough child support to equal or exceed the amount of the welfare check the family receives, so government keeps the money.

Here is an example: Mom and one child get a $276 per month TANF check.

Aside:(TANF stands for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families--name changed from AFDC or ADC when the Work First program was implemented--denotes that the assistance ends after X number of years, no matter what. I think the limit is 3 years, but don't for sure right off the top of my head.)

Back to example--Mom gets $276 per month. Once she goes on welfare, OCSE starts agreesively pursuing child support. 18 months later they locate the absent parent, find out he is working at a car wash for $7.00/hour, and start garnishing his wages for $50 per week child support. That equals $215 per month child support ($50 x 4.3 average weeks in a month is how government figures that.) Government keeps it all. In January, they attach his tax refund of $478. that money is kept by the goverment to reimburse itself TANF payments made to his kids during the time before he was located and wages garnished.

His children reap no benefit from the child support that was developed by OCSE 'on their behalf.' Government keeps it all.

I see the logic of this and understand why it is done. There certainly plenty of deadbeat parents around. But the bottom line is this: poor+poor=poor.

Janie