Evaluation of a Pilot to Reform Driver’s License Suspensions in Child Support

Nearly 30% of children in Minnesota live in single-parent households and reliable child support payments can be an important source of income, particularly for those living in poverty. Many noncustodial parents make consistent child support payments, but some do not or cannot meet their financial obligations. When they do not pay what they owe, the child support agency may take punitive actions including suspending the noncustodial parent’s driver’s license. Given existing inequities in income, these punitive approaches disproportionately affect parents of color. In recent years, policymakers, child support staff, and families have questioned the effectiveness of this approach in motivating payment, especially among noncustodial parents who may be willing, but unable, to pay.

In 2021, Minnesota’s Child Support Division launched a 6-month pilot program in 12 counties to reform the driver’s license suspension process. It aimed to improve customer service and reduce license suspensions when they were unlikely to motivate payments or were inappropriate for the case. If county child support workers determined that a license suspension would be inappropriate, they could take other approaches to non-payment. These included more flexible options, working with noncustodial parents to identify barriers to payment, and connecting them to supports that could help bring them into compliance over time.

In this evaluation, we examined the impact of the pilot program by comparing noncustodial parents who received pilot services to similar parents who did not. The analysis followed parents for 12 months after the pilot to test for differences in outcomes between the pilot and business-as-usual groups. We found that:

The pilot temporarily increased communication between child support workers and noncustodial parents.
The rate of license suspensions decreased by 12 percentage points in the pilot group, relative to business-as-usual; in other words, for every eight noncustodial parents in the pilot, one license suspension was prevented.
Pilot workers reviewed the individual circumstances of each case, which resulted in a 25 percentage point increase in administratively stopping the suspension process before it went through.
The pilot produced a 4 percentage point reduction in payment compliance during the first six months; this effect was lessened by 12 months. The change in the average amount of money paid between the pilot and business-as-usual groups was not statistically significant.
Noncustodial parents in the pilot group were more likely to receive arrears management (a form of debt forgiveness), but no more likely to have their child support order reviewed for a possible modification.
The pilot appeared to reduce disparities in some outcomes for African Americans compared with White noncustodial parents, including license suspensions and the use of payment agreements and arrears management.

The results point to the pilot’s success in achieving the goals of improved customer service and reduced suspensions, as well as closing some of the disparities between White and African American parents. At the same time, it had a small negative impact on payment compliance. This information can be used to inform policy and practice changes and suggests that more intensive services may be needed to improve child support payments, especially among disadvantaged populations.