Unpublished Child Support Work and Research:
For the past fifteen years, I have examined the cost of raising children. In this ongoing research my interest has been not only with the estimates but also with how underlying assumptions and sampling affect the estimates.
1990 Report funded by DHHS (1980 to 1986 CEX)
2000 Report funded by Institute for Research on Poverty (1996 through 1998 CEX)
2006 Report funded by State of Oregon (1998 through 2004 CEX)
2010 Draft Report funded by the State of Calfornia (2004 through 2008 CEX) This is my draft of the portion on the cost of children
2010 Final Report of the review of the State of California's child support guidelines
A 1994 report prepared for the State of Minnesota on the basic consumption needs of children
An important component of the construction of the child support guidelines is the determination of family total spending. In 2004, the state of California funded a study to examine the relationship between disposable income and spending in families with children < 2004 California Report >
I consulted with numerous states on their child support guidelines. Since the early 1990s, I have worked with the Indiana Domestic Relations Committee of the Indiana Judicial Council who have given me permission to post some of the work products here.
Reports examing the construction of the Basic Child Support Obligation (BCSO) table:
1997 Report to the Indiana Domestic Relations Committee
2002 Report to the Indiana Domestic Relations Committee
Shared Parenting (Joint Physical Custody) has received increased attention in recent years. Ten years ago I presented a paper at conference on this topic. In the audience was Dan Phillips who was sufficiently convinced by my paper that he urged the state of New Jersey to adopt my proposed shared parenting credit. Building upon the experience of New Jersey and other states, the state of Indiana has adopted a shared parenting credit. For their deliberations, I prepared the following sets of papers:
Accounting for Shared Parenting in Child Support Determination
Is Shared Parenting for Everyone?
Selected Published Work on Child Support
Public and Private Responsibility for the Financial Costs of Raising Children. In Zukunftsperspektiven der Finanzierung offentlicher Aufgaben. Edited by Theurl and Thoni. Bohlau Wein. 2002, pp. 191to 208.
"Fair Shares: Meeting the Financial Needs of Children after Divorce." In Child Support: The Guideline Option by Ross Finnie, Institute for Research on Public Finance, Montreal, Canada, 1994.
"Tradeoffs Implicit in Child Support Guidelines," with Erik Evenhouse, Siobhan Reilly, and Eugene Smolensky.  Journal of the Association of Public Analysis and Management, Volume 11, Number 1,Winter 1992, p. 1 - 20.