intuitive lawmaking the example of child support.pptVIP

Intuitive Lawmaking: The Example of Child Support Ira Mark Ellman Sanford Braver Robert J. MacCoun How Do People Think About Rules? Child Support awards as case study Child Support: The Legal Context Decisions were once highly discretionary More recently, states use guidelines Similar to sentencing guidelines Written by consultants Difficult tradeoffs not addressed Our study Asks people to address them: what principles? Asks them to decide cases: how much support? Some of Our Questions What do people favor? Decision principles Child-support amounts Do their favored amounts follow logically from the principles they explicitly endorse? Is there consensus? Do characteristics like gender matter? Are Lay intuitions on support amounts consistent with existing law? Method: Survey Instruments Who We Ask Members of jury pool in Tucson Good community sample 70% response rate to long forms Today’s data from first 2 sessions About 400 respondents Continuing study Nine weeks of further variations Gender among them What We Ask Likerts: 1 (strong disagree) to 7 (strong agree) Support Amounts in Scenarios that assume One child (9 year old boy) Mom is CP, Dad is support obligor Son “lives mostly with Mom, but Dad sees him often” Dad earns $6000, $4000, or $2000 a month in “take-home pay”. Mom: $5,000, $3,000, or $1,000 Every subject asked about all nine income combinations Variations you won’t hear much about Set 1: Gender, CP and child Set 2: Income and number of kids Set 3: Order: Likerts v. Scenarios Set 4: Schaeffer wording Set 5: Showing incomes Set 6: Varying visitation arrangements Set 7: relocation and remarriage of the custodial mom Factors 3 4 3: Capping Father’s Responsibility Most disagree: mean rating 2.81 4: Earner’s Priority Highest average agreement of all: 5.69 Notes for Slide 16, EFA EFA explains 52% of the variance in respondent ratings of individual Likert items. Factor 1 “Gross Disparity Plus” 7 items with high positive loadings 3 No Loss, 2 E