Parents Honor Car Payments More Than Child Support, Study Finds

Parents are more likely to fall behind on child support than on car payments, a study released Friday by the Children’s Defense Fund said.

The advocacy group said the national delinquency rate for used-car loans was less than 3% in 1992, while the delinquency rate for child support owed to mothers was 49% in 1990.

For its report, the group surveyed the performance of state child support enforcement agencies, which serve families on welfare and non-welfare families who ask for help.

It found that after a decade of federal and state government efforts to improve child support enforcement, progress has been slow, state agencies are swamped, and millions of children are not getting the support they deserve.

The White House has estimated that $34 billion goes uncollected every year.

Among the Children’s Defense Fund findings:

* Child support payments were made in 14.7% of cases in 1983. By 1992, the rate edged up to 18.7% of cases.

* Non-welfare child support caseloads have nearly quadrupled, from 1.7 million in 1983 to almost 6.5 million in 1992. Overall, agencies more than doubled their caseloads.

* At the current rate of improvement, it would be more than 180 years before each child served by a state agency could be guaranteed even a partial support payment.