Child Support Compliance in the USA and Australia: To Persuade or Punish?

In this paper, we compare strategies employed in Australia and the U.S. to attempt to increase child support compliance. We compare the tendency in the U.S. to look to various punitive measures and compare that approach with the more holistic approach that has sometimes been used in Australia. We note that, at least based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, child support compliance has not significantly changed during the period from 1993-2015. We speculate upon why this may have occurred, and highlight promising initiatives in the U.S. that reflect a move away from a punitive compliance strategy. Keywords: child support, compliance strategies, child support enforcement, guidelines, parenting classes