CHILD SUPPORT ASSURANCE (Institute for Research on Poverty Study)

The real frontier [in the welfare reform process] is in the Wisconsin state capital, Madison, at the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Research on Poverty. -Barbara Bergman, 1987 Bergman is referring to the University of Wisconsin Institute for Research on Poverty's seminal effort to work with the State of Wisconsin to design and implement a new child support assurance system (CSAS), and to estimate its costs and benefits. The objective of the CSAS is to hold noncustodial parents to their child support obligations while at the same time guaranteeing a minimum assured benefit to single-parent families. Included in this volume are the major research products of that effort, plus several chapters commissioned specifically for this volume.