SINGLE MOMS AND DEADBEAT DADS: THE ROLE OF EARNINGS, MARRIAGE MARKET CONDITIONS, AND PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY

• Date: 01 February 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/iere.12267
• Published date: 01 February 2018
• Author: Andrew Beauchamp,Geoffrey Sanzenbacher,Shannon Seitz,Meghan M. Skira

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW

Vol. 59, No. 1, February 2018

SINGLE MOMS AND DEADBEAT DADS: THE ROLE OF EARNINGS, MARRIAGE

MARKET CONDITIONS, AND PREFERENCE HETEROGENEITY∗

BYANDREW BEAUCHAMP,GEOFFREY SANZENBACHER,SHANNON SEITZ,

AND MEGHAN M. SKIRA1

Wright State University, U.S.A.; Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, U.S.A.;

Analysis Group, U.S.A.; University of Georgia, U.S.A.

Why do some men father children outside of marriage without providing support? Why do some women have

children outside of marriage when they receive little support from fathers? Why is this behavior more common

among Blacks than Whites? We estimate a dynamic equilibrium model of marriage, employment, fertility,

and child support decisions. We consider the extent to which low earnings, marriage market conditions, and

preference heterogeneity explain nonmarital childbearing, deadbeat fatherhood, and racial differences in these

outcomes. We find the Black–White earnings gap and preference heterogeneity explain a substantial portion of

racial differences, whereas marriage market conditions are less important.

1. INTRODUCTION

I came to understand the importance of fatherhood through its absence—both in my life and in the

lives of others. I came to understand that the hole a man leaves when he abandons his responsibility to

his children is one that no government can fill. We can do everything possible to provide good jobs and

good schools and safe streets for our kids, but it will never be enough to fully make up the difference.

—President Barack Obama, June 19, 2009.

By 2006, the United States reached a “dubious milestone,” as over half of all births to women

under the age of 30 were to single mothers.2As President Obama points out in the quote

above, many of these families suffer from a lack of resources. In 2013, the poverty rate among

households headed by a female with children was 40%.3This problem is due in part to the fact

that single mothers tend to receive little financial support from the fathers of their children.

Two questions naturally arise: (i) Why are so many women willing to have children outside of

marriage when they receive little support from fathers? (ii) Why do men father children outside

of marriage and not provide support? To shed light on these questions, we develop and estimate

a dynamic equilibrium model of marriage, employment, fertility, and child support decisions.

The model is motivated by several stylized facts documented in the literature (see, e.g., Bartfeld

and Meyer, 1994; Clarke et al., 1998; Mincy and Sorensen, 1998; Freeman and Waldfogel, 2001;

Cancian and Meyer, 2004). Table 1 presents statistics from the 1993 wave of the National

Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort (NLSY79) that highlight these stylized facts. First,

∗Manuscript received July 2015; revised June 2016.

1We thank Jerome Adda, Anna Aizer, Santanu Chatterjee, Luca Flabbi, Ian Schmutte, Holger Sieg, Steven Stern,

Matthew Wiswall, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the University of Georgia, the University of

Virginia, Mississippi State University, Wright State University, the Urban Institute, the Southern Economic Association

Meetings, the Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Dynamics, the North American Winter Meetings of

the Econometric Society, the CeMENT National Workshop, and the SOLE/EALE World Conference for helpful

comments. This article was previously circulated under the title “Deadbeat Dads.” Please address correspondence to:

Meghan M. Skira, Department of Economics, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, B461 Amos Hall,

Athens, GA 30602. Phone: 706-542-1311. E-mail: skira@uga.edu.

2See Robert Herbert’s “A Dubious Milestone” in the New YorkTimes, June 21, 2008.

3Source: 2013 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

191

C

(2017) by the Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social

and Economic Research Association

192 BEAUCHAMP ET AL.

TABLE 1

CHARACTERISTICS OF MEN AGED 31–35 AND WOMEN AGED 29–33 IN 1993 WAVE OF NLSY79

Single Mothers

Nonmothers Married Mothers Paid Support Not Paid Support

% White 69.71 73.01 36.20 22.14

% Black 30.29 26.99 63.80 77.86

% Less than high school 5.02 10.04 17.18 21.77

% High school education 54.12 70.27 71.17 75.65

% College education 40.86 19.70 11.66 2.58

% Not working 12.72 35.04 39.88 45.76

% Working 87.28 64.96 60.12 54.24

Mean annual earnings $32,100 $22,476 $20,973 $20,145

N558 1,056 163 271

Absent Fathers

Nonfathers Present Fathers Paying Support Not Paying Support

% White 70.88 84.62 45.71 25.93

% Black 29.12 15.38 54.29 74.07

% Less than high school 9.64 9.19 15.43 27.57

% High school education 55.62 61.35 80.00 67.08

% College education 34.74 29.46 4.57 5.35

% Not working 17.27 6.19 14.86 33.33

% Working 82.73 93.81 85.14 66.67

Mean annual earnings $36,980 $48,205 $30,357 $27,883

N498 533 175 243

NOTES: Men and women are divided into the mutually exclusive groups above based on their marriage, fertility, and child

support payment or receipt status. Married mothers and present fathers include those who are currently cohabiting. The

married mothers group includes women who are currently married but have children from prior relationships. Working

is defined as working at least 775 hours in the calendar year. Mean annual earnings are calculated for those who work

at least that amount. All dollar amounts are in constant 2000 dollars. Percentages refer to column percentages.

single mothers, particularly those that do not receive support, tend to be less educated than

other women.4Second, single motherhood and absent fatherhood are more common among

Blacks than Whites. Third, the majority of absent fathers of either race do not pay support, and

these deadbeat fathers tend to have lower education levels, employment rates, and earnings

than other men. These facts suggest that any model that aims to explain single motherhood and

deadbeat fatherhood must account for heterogeneity in labor and marriage market conditions

across racial and educational groups as well as any preference heterogeneity that may drive

these decisions.

Our goal is to determine the extent to which low earnings, marriage market conditions, and

preference heterogeneity can explain nonmarital childbearing, deadbeat fatherhood, and racial

differences in these outcomes. The model allows for racial differences in the availability and

educational composition of potential spouses, in earnings, and in preferences over marriage and

fertility. The basic intuition is the following: Both men and women may prefer to have children

within marriage (and those preferences may differ across race), but if faced with a shortage of

high-income husbands, it may be optimal for some women to have children with low-income

men outside of marriage, as these low-income men may be unwilling to sacrifice their own

consumption for the financial commitment of present fatherhood. If women are willing to have

children outside of marriage, low-income men may have incentives to have children outside of

marriage but not support them when faced with the trade-off between own consumption and

providing support. These channels may be especially salient for Black individuals, as the ratio

4Throughout the article, we define single mothers as mothers of children born outside of a cohabiting relationship

as well as divorced mothers. Absent fathers refer to fathers of children born outside of a cohabiting relationship as well

as divorced fathers, and a deadbeat father is an absent father that does not pay any child support.

SINGLE MOMS AND DEADBEAT DADS 193

of men to women has been consistently lower for Blacks than for Whites, and racial wage gaps

(both conditional and unconditional on education) have been extensively documented (see,

e.g., Neal and Johnson, 1996; Altonji and Blank, 1999; Black et al., 2006).

More specifically, in our dynamic discrete choice model, single men and women decide

whether to work, and single men additionally decide whether to provide child support for

children from prior relationships. Individuals match in marriage markets segmented by age,

region, and race, and the rate at which men and women meet is driven by the ratio of single

men to single women (i.e., the sex ratio). The characteristics of singles, such as their education

and whether they have children from past relationships, determine their desirability as spouses.

The probability of meeting a partner with given educational attainment and with children from

past relationships depends on the population distribution of these characteristics within each

segmented marriage market. If matched, a couple makes the following decisions jointly: whether

to marry, have a child, work, and provide support for the male’s children from prior relationships.

Both the number of single men relative to single women and the composition of singles evolve

endogenously in the model.

We estimate the parameters of the model by indirect inference using a sample of men and

women from the NLSY79. We use the estimated model to conduct several counterfactual

experiments to examine the extent to which low earnings, the supply of men and women in the

marriage market, and preference heterogeneity account for nonmarital childbearing, deadbeat

fatherhood, and racial differences in these outcomes. In the first experiment, we eliminate

the Black–White gap in labor earnings that exists conditional on education. Closing the racial

earnings gap explains a substantial portion of the differences in outcomes across races: Black

marriage rates rise by about 33%, Black nonmarital childbearing rates fall by 31%, Black male

employment increases to parity with White men, and conditional on being an absent father,

Black deadbeat fatherhood rates fall by 9%. In the second experiment, we assume the stocks

of Black men and women by age, education, and year are the same as they are for Whites,

and we find that differences in population supplies do not play a large role in explaining racial

differences in behavior. In the third experiment, we assume Blacks have the same preferences as

Whites for marriage and fertility. We find preference heterogeneity explains a large portion of

racial differences in marriage and nonmarital births but not employment or deadbeat fatherhood

(conditional on being an absent father).

In light of the proliferation of state-level policies that focus on increased child support

enforcement, we analyze a counterfactual policy experiment in which there is perfect child

support enforcement. Across both races, we find perfect enforcement leads to increases in

marriage rates and substantial reductions in births outside of marriage. An advantage of the

structural approach is that we can examine how welfare changes as a result of this policy.

The majority of women experience welfare gains, especially Black women and those with

less education, and most men experience welfare losses. However, not all women gain. Perfect

enforcement alters incentives to marry, resulting in changes in the availability and characteristics

of potential partners over time. We find that the women who are worse off are those who end up

marrying less educated men due to these marriage market changes. This finding highlights the

importance of modeling the marriage market equilibrium, namely, that policy changes affect

partner sorting in equilibrium.

Finally, we compare child poverty rates across the counterfactuals, and we find the elimination

of the racial gap in earnings conditional on education leads to the largest reduction in poverty

rates among Black children. The decline in child poverty comes about in part from the increase

in marriage as well as the increase in child support provision by absent fathers when the racial

earnings gap is eliminated. These results suggest that policies directed toward boosting the

employment and earnings of absent fathers are a particularly effective means of fighting child

poverty.

This article builds on several related literatures, including the theoretical literature that studies

the rise in nonmarital childbearing (see, e.g., Akerlof et al., 1996; Willis, 1999). Willis (1999)

shows that, in populations where females are in excess supply and men have low absolute levels