Child Support Enforcement Rankings

Compare how each U.S. state performs on child support enforcement. Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) FY2022 Annual Report, which tracks more than 12,500,000 active cases across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. According to OCSE, agencies collectively distributed more than $32,000,000,000 to families in fiscal year 2022; these rankings show the federal performance metrics used to measure state Title IV-D agency effectiveness: collection rate, paternity establishment rate, share of cases with a current support order, and total dollars collected. See our methodology for definitions.

Performance ranking categories

Highest Collection Rates

States ranked by child support collection rate — the share of owed support that is actually collected.

Most Cases by State

States ranked by total number of child support enforcement cases, with collection amounts.

Highest Guideline Percentages (Income Model)

Percentage-of-Income states ranked by the base obligation percentage applied to the non-custodial parent's net monthly income.

Browse all states

Open any state's profile to see its full enforcement metrics, formula type, guideline percentages, parenting-time treatment, and a state-specific calculator.

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

How OCSE measures state performance

The federal Office of Child Support Services (formerly OCSE) tracks five performance indicators for every state Title IV-D agency under 45 CFR §305: paternity establishment percentage (PEP), child support order establishment, current support collection rate, arrears collection rate, and cost-effectiveness. States with higher composite scores receive larger federal incentive funding under Section 458A of the Social Security Act.

Collection rate — the most-cited ranking metric — measures the percentage of currently-owed support that is actually collected within the fiscal year. National median sits near 65%, with top-quartile states above 75% and bottom-quartile under 55%. Collection rate is shaped by case mix (heavier obligor incomes lift it; high-arrears caseloads depress it), administrative capacity (centralized case management vs county-by-county), employer-cooperation quality (income-withholding latency), and the prevalence of self-employed obligors (notoriously hard to enforce). Texas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin consistently rank in the top decile.

Paternity establishment percentage tracks the share of non-marital births where paternity has been formally established (in-hospital acknowledgment or court order). PEP above 90% is now common — the Voluntary Acknowledgment of Paternity (VAP) program signed at hospitals has driven dramatic gains since the 1990s. Cases with a current support order tracks the share of all IV-D cases that actually have an enforceable order on file. Cost-effectiveness measures dollars collected per program dollar spent. States with mature digital case-management systems regularly post ratios above $5 collected per $1 of program cost.

About this data: Child support enforcement statistics come from the federal OCSE FY2022 Annual Report. Collection rate is the percentage of current child support owed that was actually collected within the fiscal year. Larger states naturally have more cases but may have lower collection rates. Per ACF/OCSS, performance metrics are published annually after the close of each federal fiscal year (October 1 — September 30).