Federal Child-Support Collection May Replace Welfare : Public Aid: Congress will consider implementing a centralized system to ensure that fathers pay. The plan would subsidize families with no other recourse.

It sounds too good to be true: a social insurance system that would lift children out of poverty, remove single mothers from welfare dependency, force absent fathers to pay for their children’s upbringing and cost the government next to nothing. And, it might even discourage divorce and out-of-wedlock births.

It’s called child-support assurance. After a decade of gestation in think tanks and university social science departments, it’s headed for the legislative arena.

Its advocates are already calling it the next big idea in social policy--one that eventually could replace the much-maligned Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, which disburses cash to impoverished single mothers. The plan’s critics say that it’s just another welfare giveaway in conservative dress.

There are multiple variations, but the basic proposal is for the federal government to take over from the states the job of collecting the billions of dollars in child support that noncustodial parents--mostly fathers--owe but are not paying.

An absent parent would be required to pay a fixed percentage of his or her income (say, 17% for one child, 24% for two, etc.) in child support. If the noncustodial parent were unable pay the full amount--due to low earnings or some disability--the government would step in and pay a minimum benefit to the custodial parent--say, $2,000 for one child and lesser amounts for successive children.

These payments would be made only if the custodial parent identified the other parent and assisted in the collection effort. At present, fewer than a fourth of mothers of children born out of wedlock go through the legal procedure of establishing paternity. Under the AFDC system, there is no financial incentive from them to do so. Except for a $50-a-month set-aside, all child-support money collected for children on welfare goes to the government, not the mother.

The child-support assurance plan would cover all custodial single parents, regardless of income. Proponents say this would free the system of the welfare stigma.

“Child-support assurance would be analogous to survivor’s insurance in the Social Security system,” said Irwin Garfinkel, a Columbia University professor generally regarded as the father of the concept. “Survivor’s insurance compensates for the loss of income in the event of death. Child-support assurance compensates for loss arising from divorce, separation or nonmarriage.”

In Garfinkel’s plan, a single mother on AFDC would lose a dollar of her welfare benefit for every dollar she received in child-support assurance--thus assuring that the cost to taxpayers would be minimal. If that mother got a job, she would keep the dollars she earned with no loss in child support payments. Under the current AFDC system, mothers who take jobs lose their welfare benefits.

In addition, said Harvard professor David Ellwood, another longtime proponent, child-support assurance would shift the stigma of government aid. “If the public starts complaining about the money being spent on insured child-support benefits, they will say: ‘Those darn fathers are not pulling their weight. We’re paying their child support for them!’ ”

The child-support assurance bill that Rep. Thomas J. Downey (D-N.Y.) intends to introduce this year would include a punitive element: Noncustodial parents who could not meet their payments would be required to enroll in the Job Corps and have a portion of their future earnings garnisheed. “The idea of getting punitive with nonpaying fathers is very popular with conservatives,” said Downey.

Several conservative think tanks are already gearing up to fight child-support assurance.

“Their estimates of how much money you can collect from absent fathers are pure pie-in-the-sky,” said Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute.

State and local agencies are collecting about $10 billion a year in child-support payments. Advocates say that federal enforcement, using automatic payroll deductions and computerized location services, could double or even triple that amount. Besharov disagreed, however.

“Especially when you are dealing with fathers of children on welfare, you just can’t get water from a stone,” he said. “The money isn’t there.”

Advocates of the plan say that knowing that they cannot escape supporting their children might keep more men in their homes and marriages. Downey feels that it also might restrain out-of-wedlock child-bearing.

“I want guys out there to think, when they are in the magic moment of lovemaking, that if this woman gets pregnant, I’m going to be on a financial hook for the rest of my life.”

The debate promises to be lively.