Child-Support Laws and Contraceptive Care

Abstract

The paper uses a simple theoretical model of potential parents' contraceptive decisions to analyze the effects of different child-support laws on contraceptive care, the probability of accidental pregnancy, and the distribution of welfare. Among other things, the model implies that under noncooperative contraceptive decision making the rules of paternal, maternal, and joint liability are all inefficient, while a combination of a liability rule and a tax is efficient. Under cooperative contraceptive decision making, it shows that the effects of these rules are reversed: the combination of liability rule and tax is inefficient, while the others are all efficient.