Part time (20 hours per week) at state minimum wage x 4.33 weeks
Half the state median weekly earnings for full-time female workers x 4.33 weeks
1 child, 2 children
In Scenario 3, for each state, we assumed that the father on the case worked for 4.33 weeks and each week he worked part-time (20 hours per week) at the state’s minimum wage rate in 2018. For the median state, the father’s gross income was $714 or about 69 percent of the federal poverty level for a single person household in 2019, and about $8,568 annually (see Appendix B Tables 1 and 2). We use this income level to approximate the earnings of economically disadvantaged fathers in the IV-D caseload who are least likely to make any child support payments in a given year. Sorensen and Zibman (2001) estimate that low-income fathers who do not pay any child support have average annual incomes of $5,627 in 1997 dollars, which is approximately $8,980 in 2018 dollars (slightly more than the median annual income of fathers in Scenario 3).