Publications by Author

Robert Plotnick

Research

Plotnick, R. D.; Garfinkel, I.; McLanahan, S. S.; Ku, I., (2007), The Impact of Child Support Enforcement Policy on Nonmarital Childbearing, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 26(1), 79-98.

The interaction of welfare and child support regulations has created a situation in which child support policy's incentives that discourage unwed fatherhood tend to be stronger than its incentives that encourage unwed motherhood. This suggests that more stringent child support enforcement creates incentives that reduce the likelihood of nonmarital childbearing, particularly among women with a significant chance of needing public assistance in the event of a nonmarital birth and their male partners. We investigate this hypothesis with a sample of women from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to which we add information on state child support enforcement. We examine childbearing behavior between the ages of 15 and 44 before marriage and during periods of non-marriage following divorce or widowhood. The estimates indicate that women living in states with more effective child support enforcement are less likely to bear children when unmarried, especially if they are young, never-married, or black. The findings suggest that improved child support enforcement may be a potent intervention for reducing nonmarital childbearing.

Plotnick, R. Comment on: "The socioeconomic status of black males: The increasing importance of incarceration," by Steven Raphael, in Public Policy and the Income Distribution, John Quigley, Alan Auerbach and David Card (eds.), New York: Russell Sage Foundation 2006.

Available online at: http://urbanpolicy.berkeley.edu/smolensky.htm

Over the last forty years, rising national income has helped reduce poverty rates, but this has been accompanied by an increase in economic inequality. While these trends are largely attributed to technological change and demographic shifts, such as changing birth rates, labor force patterns, and immigration, public policies have also exerted a profound affect on the welfare of Americans. In Public Policy and the Income Distribution, editors Alan Auerbach, David Card, and John Quigley assemble a distinguished roster of policy analysts to confront the key questions about the role of government policy in altering the level and distribution of economic well being.

Public Policy and the Income Distribution tackles many of the most difficult and intriguing questions about how government intervention (or lack thereof) has affected the incomes of everyday Americans. Rebecca Blank analyzes welfare reform, and presents systematic research on income, poverty rates, and welfare and labor force participation of single mothers. She finds that single mothers worked more and were less dependent on public assistance following welfare reform, and that low-skilled single mothers had no greater difficulty finding work than others. Timothy Smeeding compares poverty reduction programs in the United States with policies in other developed countries. Poverty and inequality are higher in the United States than in other advanced economies, but Smeeding argues that this is largely a result of policy choices. Poverty rates based on market incomes alone are actually lower in the United States than elsewhere, but government interventions in the United States were less than half as effective at reducing poverty as were programs in the other countries. The most dramatic poverty reduction story of twentieth century America was seen among the elderly, who went from being the age group most likely to live in poverty in the 1960s to the group least likely to be poor at the end of the century. Gary Englehardt and Jonathan Gruber examine the role of policy in alleviating old-age poverty by estimating the impact of Social Security benefits on the income of the elderly poor. They find that the growth in Social Security almost completely explains the large decline in elderly poverty in the United States.

The twentieth century was remarkable in the extent to which advances in public policy helped improve the economic well being of Americans. Synthesizing existing knowledge on the effectiveness of public policy and contributing valuable new research, Public Policy and the Income Distribution examines public policy's successes, and points out the areas in which progress remains to be made.

Plotnick, R. with Irwin Garfinkel, Sara McLanahan, and Inhoe Ku. (2004). Better child support enforcement: Can it reduce teenage premarital childbearing? Journal of Family Issues, 25(5), 634-57.

Stricter child support enforcement may reduce unwed childbearing by raising the costs of fatherhood. The authors investigate this hypothesis using a sample of young women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, to which they add information on state child support enforcement. Models of the probability of a teenage premarital birth and of teenage premarital pregnancy and pregnancy resolution provide tentative evidence that during the early 1980s, teens living in states with higher rates of paternity establishment were less likely to become unwed mothers. This relationship is stronger for non-Hispanic Whites than for non-Hispanic Blacks. The findings suggest that policies that shift more costs of premarital child-bearing to men may reduce this behavior, at least among non-Hispanic Whites.

Plotnick R. with Elizabeth Peters and Se-Ook Jeong. (2003). “How will welfare reform affect family structure and childbearing decisions?" Pp. 59- 91 in R.A. Gordon & H. Walberg (Eds) Changing Welfare. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2003.

An abstract for this article is not available.

Plotnick R. with Inhoe Ku. (2003). Do children from welfare families obtain less schooling? Demography, 40(1),151-170.

In this study, we analyzed whether parents' receipt of welfare affects children's educational attainment in early adulthood, independent of its effect through changing family income. We used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with information on parents' welfare receipt over the first 15 years of childhood. Cross-sectional results show that greater exposure to welfare is significantly associated with children's poorer educational attainment. Family fixed-effect regressions also indicate a negative effect of exposure to welfare, but its overall pattern is less consistent. Although exposure to welfare in early childhood has no effect, in adolescence and, to a lesser degree, in middle childhood, its effect is often negative.

Plotnick, R. (2003). "A measure of horizontal inequity," Review of Economics and Statistics, 63:2, May 1981, 283-288. Reprinted in The Economics of Poverty and Inequality, Frank A. Cowell (ed.). Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Inc., 2003.

An abstract for this article is not available.

Plotnick, R. with Maureen Waller. (2001). Effective child support policy for low-income families: Lessons from street level research. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 20(1), 89-110.

Since 1984, policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to reforming the child support system. Despite this attention, the child support system has often failed to increase the economic security of single-parent families. This article analyzes findings from recent qualitative studies to explain why the child support system breaks down for so many low-income families. This research suggests that parents often prefer informal arrangements of support and do not comply with child support regulations they perceive to be unfair, counterproductive, or punitive. It also suggests that there is a mismatch between the premises and goals of child support policy and what low-income parents desire from the system. This mismatch impedes low-income parents' willingness and ability to comply with existing policy, even when they wish to do so, and will make reform difficult.

Plotnick, R. with Maureen Waller. (2000). A failed relationship: Low-income families and the child support enforcement system. FOCUS (Newsletter of the Institute for Research on Poverty), Spring, pp. 12-17.

An abstract for this article is not available.

Plotnick, R. with Eugene Smolensky, Eirik Evenhouse and Siobhan Reilly. (2000). "The twentieth century record of inequality and poverty in the United States", pp. 249-300 in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Volume 3, The Twentieth Century, Stanley Engerman and Robert Gallman (eds.), Cambridge University Press.

In the past several decades there has been a significant increase in our knowledge of the economic history of the United States. This has come about in part because of the development in economic history, most particularly with the emergence of the statistical and analytical contributions of the new economic history, and in part because of related developments in social, labor, and political history that have important implications for the understanding of economic change. The Cambridge Economic History of the United States has been designed to take full account of new knowledge in the subject, while at the same time offering a comprehensive survey of the history of economic activity and economic change in the United States, and in those regions whose economies have at certain times been closely allied to that of the United States: Canada and the Caribbean.

Plotnick, R.(2000). "Economic security for families with children," pp. 95-127 in The Child Welfare Challenge: Policy, Practice and Research, 2nd edition, Peter Pecora, James Whittaker, Anthony Maluccio, and Richard Barth, with Robert Plotnick, Aldine de Gruyter Publishing.

An abstract for this article is not available.

Plotnick, R. with Maureen Waller. (1999). Child Support and Low-Income Families: Perceptions, Practices, and Policy. San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of California, 1999.

Child support has become a pressing policy concern in California. The shortcomings of the state’s child support system have prompted both a new state department and numerous proposals for reform. This study poses a key question: why does the child support system break down for so many low-income families? Part of the answer lies in the mismatch between child support policy and the experiences of many low-income parents. As a result of this mismatch, many poor parents prefer informal arrangements to full compliance with regulations that they perceive to be unfair, counterproductive, or punitive. The authors, Maureen Waller and Robert Plotnick, conclude that child support policy should honor both the need for effective enforcement and constraints on low-income families.

Plotnick, R. with Laurie Deppman. (1999). Assessing child abuse prevention and intervention programs using benefit-cost analysis. Child Welfare, 78(3), 381-407.

Benefits and costs are discussed when child abuse prevention and intervention programs are proposed and evaluated, but systemic benefit- cost analysis as developed by economists has not been applied to such programs. This article presents the case for using benefit-cost analysis to structure evaluations of child abuse prevention and intervention programs.

Plotnick, R. with Saul Hoffman. (1999). The effect of neighborhood characteristics on young adult outcomes: Alternative estimates. Social Science Quarterly, 80(1), 1-18.

An abstract for this article is not available.

Plotnick, R. (1999). "Comment on ‘Horizontal inequity measurement: A basic reassessment’ by Stephen P. Jenkins and Peter J. Lambert," pp. 554-556 in Handbook on Income Inequality Measurement, Jacques Silber (ed.) Kluwer Academic Publishers.

An abstract for this article is not available.

Plotnick R. with Shelly Lundberg (1995). Teenage premarital childbearing: Do economic incentives matter? Journal of Labor Economics, 13(2), 177-200.

We develop an empirical model of adolescent premarital childbearing in which a woman's decisions affect a sequence of outcomes: premarital pregnancy, pregnancy resolution, and the occurrence of marriage before the birth. State welfare, abortion, and family planning policies alter the costs and benefits of these outcomes. For white adolescents welfare, abortion, and family planning policy variables have significant effects on these outcomes consistent with theoretical expectations. Black adolescents' behavior shows no association with the policy variables. The different racial results may reflect differences in sample size or important unmeasured racial differences in factors that influence fertility and marital behavior.

Plotnick R. 1992. The effects of attitudes on teenage premarital pregnancy and its resolution. American Sociological Review, 57(6), 800-811.

Drawing on problem behavior theory and complementary models of behavior, I examine the influence of attitudes and related personality variables on the probability of teenage premarital pregnancy and, when a pregnancy occurs, whether it is resolved by abortion, having an out-of- wedlock birth, or marrying before the birth. A sample of non-Hispanic white adolescents is drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and analyzed using the nested logit method. The estimates show that self- esteem, locus of control, attitudes toward women's family roles, attitudes toward school, educational aspirations, and religiosity are associated with premarital pregnancy and its resolution in directions predicted by theory. The effects of self-esteem, attitudes toward school, attitudes toward women's family roles, and educational expectations are substantively important. Attitudes and related personality variables are important paths through which family background characteristics influence adolescent sexual and marriage behavior.