Letter: Pursue both parents before raising wages

Re: “Summing up the math of poverty,” Start the Presses column, May 16: Dan Evans’ example in his opinion piece demonstrates how raising the minimum wage overlooks a root cause of poverty: parents’ failure to support their children.

The single mother earning $9 an hour can increase her household income without risking an inflationary spiral as businesses increase their prices to balance higher wages or terminating employees because their services are not worth $15 an hour or because they cannot afford the higher rate.

She should use the free services of the county Child Support Services Department to obtain child support from her children’s father(s). Because child support is not taxed, those father(s) need only be able to pay $540 a month to match the mother’s after-tax earnings from the $15 an hour minimum wage.

Whether social services that help low-income families subsidize businesses who pay their employees so little is debatable. What is not debatable is that taxpayers subsidize families who receive welfare benefits. What is not being debated is whether a low-income parent should be required to pursue the other parent for support even if she does not receive welfare benefits.

Advocates should press for greater enforcement of parents’ obligation to support their children. That means more funding for attorneys and investigators to track down errant parents. It also means extending such enforcement methods beyond those cases where the custodial parents apply for welfare benefits to include all cases where the children’s household income falls below a certain level.

Requiring low-income parents to pursue the nonsupporting parents for support and funding CSSD at a level to serve these additional clients will get money for poor children without warping the economy.

Mary-Lynne Fisher
La Crescenta