The impact of percentage-expressed child support orders on payments

We examine the impacts on child support payments of explicitly indexing orders to noncustodial parents' incomes by expressing orders as a percentage of income rather than as a fixed sum. Using data collected from 21 counties in Wisconsin, we find that payments on behalf of percentage-expressed orders increase much faster than would be expected were orders expressed as a fixed sum, after controlling for differences between cases with the two award types. Collections on behalf of percentage-expressed orders increase relative to fixed-sum orders because of large increases over time in the amount of the obligation; in comparison, fired-sum obligations ave extremely stable.