The federal government has historically employed both incentives and threats to engage the states in partnership to advance public policy in directions that Congress, reflecting its perception of the public good, has deemed worthy. The means by which the federal government has pursued its aims have included incentives, often financial, and threats of sanctions, also frequently of an economic nature, Nowhere in the domain of social policy has the systematic application of these "carrots" and "sticks" been used to affect the dramatic changes that have been necessary to convert a heretofore private matter of family law, formerly falling indisputably within the purview of state authority, to a function whose wide-ranging parameters fall under the authority of the federal government. That this has occurred within the space of three decades stands as a remarkable achievement in the history of federal social policy-making. We have chosen to examine here the effectiveness of two important incentive strategies employed under federal direction that may have served to bring the process of child support enforcement largely under the authority of the federal government. Prior to the enactment of welfare reform legislation in 1996, federal law required that states' practices involving AFDC program benefit calculations exclude the first US$50 in parental support collected for any given recipient's household, in any given month. These "disregards" were designed to serve as incentives to AFDC recipients to cooperate with the identification and location of the fathers of their children. During much of the history of the federal Child Support Enforcement Program, provisions have also been in place that established federal financial incentive schedules designed to encourage states to operate increasingly more efficient and effective programs. These incentive payments to states were based on federal formulas that included measures of states' cost-effectiveness in securing support payments from non-resident parents for welfare-dependent children. In a state with large AFDC populations, these federal incentive payments could amount to several million dollars a year. This study employs federal administrative data derived from states' Child Support Enforcement programs to explore the effectiveness of these two kinds of incentives in shaping program outcomes. Controlling for other substantive administrative practices, and some key state features, the authors find that these two types of incentives do appear to have had significant effects upon program achievements and outcomes, outcomes that are consistent with theory and policy intent. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
