politics

To receive government assistance in the US is to submit yourself to a whole host of requirements, some reasonable, some harsh. Each state, and each program within it, has their own requirements, which might be a test of income, of assets, or even of behavior. Some are reasonable — a millionaire probably doesn’t need food stamps; others are more punitive. A disabled single man wanting to get Medicaid in Maryland, for instance, has to show he doesn’t have assets totaling over $2,500. To receive unemployment benefits in Texas, quitting a job to take care of a child makes you ineligible, unless that child has a medical illness.

One requirement is especially odious, and little-known and little-studied: In many states, for many aid programs, you must agree to cooperate with authorities on enforcing child support against the parent of your child.

Depending on the state where they live, a single parent may have to agree to help the government recoup child support in order to receive child care assistance, food stamps, cash welfare, or Medicaid. They may have to establish parenthood of their child, provide estimated dates and locations of conception, home or work addresses of the other parent, or even sign away their right to child support payments to the state.

Given that around 80 percent of custodial parents are women, this is a welfare restriction with a disproportionate effect on one gender — and one that explicitly punishes you for being a single parent.

These requirements have rarely been at the forefront of public debates about aid programs, which often focus on work requirements and income thresholds, but their effect is significant. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the cash welfare program created by President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform in 1996, requires child support cooperation universally. About half of states also require it for key aid programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and even child care subsidies. It continues to be a priority for conservative state lawmakers: Iowa recently passed a cooperation requirement to receive Medicaid in the state. Kansas came within a single vote of passing a similar measure for food stamps. Conservative think tanks have been pushing these policies nationwide, arguing that if the government has to help a single parent, it’s only fair that they help extract something from the other parent.

These requirements are more common in conservative states, but are by no means limited to them. They range in severity, but generally require single parents to assist the state to open child support cases against non-custodial parents. In practical terms that might be as simple as providing a father’s name and address.

In other cases, like when the father isn’t known, a parent seeking an exemption from these requirements might be forced to provide intimate details to government aid workers or, in cases involving domestic abuse, justify why they fear for their child’s safety before learning whether they’ll get assistance to buy food or pay for their health care.

Child-support cooperation requirements subject single parents to the state invading their privacy

These restrictions are invasive, and much of their impact on welfare recipients is predictable.

Their first function is to act as yet another “administrative burden” to people receiving benefits. For any government aid program, every additional form that must be filled out, piece of mail that must be answered, or documentation that must be submitted is a step that can be forgotten or failed.

Too often, people who are eligible for assistance fail to receive it for these procedural reasons. Medicaid unwinding — the recent resumption of eligibility verifications that were waived during the Covid-19 pandemic’s huge drop in Medicaid enrollees — has been an example of this problem at an enormous scale. Millions of people are losing Medicaid coverage with the retightened rules, and yet many of them remain eligible for the program. They just aren’t responding to the government’s mailed notices on time, or they haven’t sent in the right forms.

Politico followed two women in Arkansas who both lost Medicaid because they didn’t submit paperwork — and, in both cases, it was related to child support cooperation. There’s no indication these women were unwilling to provide the necessary documentation, but as the bureaucratic requirements stack higher and higher, it becomes difficult to make sure every box is checked. (It also creates more places for the state to fail; in Florida, Spanish speakers have to wait on average 2.5 hours on hold to reach the Medicaid call center.)

They can also act as a deterrent that stops people from seeking help in the first place. One of the difficulties with quantifying the harm of child support requirements is that states rarely measure the cause of a person losing benefits, like the two women from Arkansas. Another is that it’s impossible to know how many people simply decide not to apply because of some combination of fear, despair, or fatigue.

Not surprisingly, there are posts on social media sites like Reddit from women looking for a “state that doesn’t require child support to receive food stamps,” because “my child’s father … is a very angry and hostile guy and I’m just trying to separate myself from him.” A 2005 KFF report described this perverse effect: “[A local caseworker] explained that when younger mothers found out about the cooperation requirement, they usually decided to forgo Medicaid. These mothers often have a bond to the father, she said, and are less likely to have serious medical problems. They choose to go without preventive health care.”

Administrative burdens and deterrent effects are bloodless terms that can mask the cold budgetary motivations for these policies: States can keep their spending down by coming up with hurdles that reduce people taking advantage of the benefits to which they should be entitled.

But child support cooperation requirements also seem to have a third, cruel purpose: to humiliate these parents before the state.

A survey of state employee manuals, testimony before state legislatures, and social media posts makes it hard to avoid that conclusion. One woman explaining her experience in Oklahoma applying for TANF writes on Reddit, “When I said that my baby’s father was now permanently disabled and would not be involved or able to pay child support due to living in a medical facility, they said, ‘We cannot sign you up for these benefits, so if you change your mind, come back and see us.’” The Medicaid caseworker in that KFF study described the pit over which the state dangles people in need: “Older mothers — those in their 30s with diabetes and hypertension — often realize that their precarious health leaves them no choice but to cooperate.”

Nobody claiming a tax write-off, a homeownership deduction, or a tax-preferenced savings account for their child’s college is subjected to the same indignities.

It’s true that for some applicants, these requirements won’t amount to much on top of the already onerous restrictions they face. If you’re already receiving child support, if you don’t mind sharing personal information with agency employees, and if you’re great at keeping track of deadlines and forms, the requirements will be just another box to check. But for many people, the complexity of these applications is extraordinary, and the different requirements for different programs can be daunting. Those using multiple forms of aid at once may face multiple cooperation requirements from multiple agencies.