The Social Security Act is made up of 21 “Titles”, each numbered in sequence using Roman numerals:
http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/ssact-toc.htm
The fourth “Title” (Title IV) covers “grants to states for aid and services to needy families with children and for child-welfare services”:
http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title04/0400.htm
Therefore, Title IV creates and generally covers what most Americans refer to as the public “welfare” system.
Title IV currently has four parts (A, B, D, and E), with each part serving a particular function within the overall “welfare” system.
The first part, Part A (or Title IV-A) provides “block grants to states for temporary assistance for needy families” (see link to Title IV above), which is what most Americans refer to as “public assistance”.
Historically, Title IV-A started out as Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), then changed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) before becoming what it is today — Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).
Title IV-A is basically where the funding comes from for public assistance programs that provide food stamps, Section 8 housing, cash assistance, etc…
All of the rest of the Parts (B, D, and E) were subsequently created to help offset/recover the costs of delivering public assistance services under Part A.
For instance, Part B (Title IV-B) has two subparts, with the first providing for “child welfare services” programs and the second providing funding for “safe and stable families” programs. Again, these programs have a main purpose of offsetting Title IV-A expenditures.
That brings us to Part D (Title IV-D), which provides funding for the nation’s Child Support Enforcement program… Originally, Title IV-D was created to reimburse taxpayers (the government) for what was being spent on providing Title IV-A/welfare/public assistance services. This was accomplished through the collection of “child support” from an absent/abandoning parent (who was believed to be the cause of the need for public assistance). This “child support” was then solely used to help repay welfare expenditures.
However, this is not the case today. The child support program has “evolved,” according to the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, and now “child support is no longer primarily a welfare reimbursement, revenue-producing device for the Federal and State governments…”, as taken from Page 1 of the following OCSE publication:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2004/Strategic_Plan_FY2005-2009.pdf
Further, using the same logic, it can be said that the foster care and adoption program covered under the last part (Title IV-E) is also part of the welfare system as well.
What all of this means is that child support is not only a form of welfare — it’s a HUGE part of the nation’s welfare program.
Therefore, child support IS a form of welfare.
According to OCSE statistics, almost half (43%) of the current national child support program caseload is made up of those who NEVER received public assistance, as taken from Figure 1 of this preliminary report for 2009:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2010/reports/preliminary_report_fy2009/#boxscores
Further, that same report indicates that only 14% of the current caseload are actually receiving public assistance.
Annually, taxpayers spend a total of $5.8 BILLION on just the administrative expenditures of collecting child support (Figure 8 of the same report), with an additional $504 Million in incentive funding as well.
This means that BILLIONS of our tax dollars are being spent on paying for a government agency to collect money for people who could otherwise collect that money on their own.
Imagine what our country could do with just 43% of $6.3B ($2.7B) if we as a nation decided that taxpayers shouldn’t be responsible for the bad choices that rich people make, and kicked the middle/upper class out of the child support/welfare system…