In the United States, rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth are climbing so dramatically that over half of the next generation is likely to spend part of its childhood in single-mother families. As many as half of these families will live in poverty, caused in large measure by the failure of current government regulations to secure adequate child support from absent parents and to assure minimum support when parents cannot provide it. Assuring Child Support introduces the Child Support Assurance System, a remedy to this problem that is both feasible and affordable, a practical reform that is within the nation's grasp. "An extremely well-written and provocative book." —Eastern Economic Journal

Political observers have long since struggled with understanding how new ideas are placed on the public agenda. In their studies, most social scientists have relied on biographical sketches and intensive case studies to explore the intricacies of innovation. Researchers have had much more difficulty, however, in moving from these individual success stories to more generalizable theories of entrepreneurship. This book builds such a theory by focusing on the critical issue of child support enforcement in the United States. Covering over a 100 year period, this book tracks the evolution of multiple sets of political entrepreneurs as they grapple with the child support problem: charity workers with local law enforcement in the nineteenth century, social workers throughout the 1960s, conservatives during the 1970s, women's groups and women legislators in the 1980s, and fathers' rights groups in the 1990s and beyond.