The Child Support Enforcement Program: A Review of Data

This report, prepared by the Congressional Research Service, examines the IV-D child support caseload, collection, and expenditure data from Fiscal Year (FY) 1978 through FY 2015. It also presents more detailed data, gathered from state-submitted reports to the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, on collections, expenditures, paternity establishment, child support order establishment, cost-effectiveness, and program financing impacts on the federal government and the states for various years during the period.

The 38-year trend data for child support collections and caseload have been disaggregated into two categories: Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) cases (known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC prior to 1997) and non-TANF (non-AFDC prior to 1997) cases. In FY1999, OCSE started classifying the child support caseload into three categories—current TANF assistance, former TANF assistance, and never TANF assistance.