Simplify, Notify, Modify: Using Behavioral Insights to Increase Incarcerated Parents’ Requests for Child Support Modifications

This report from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation is one in a series of reports to be produced from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project, which seeks to use a behavioral economics lens to examine programs that serve poor and vulnerable families in the United States. This report presents findings of a project done in collaboration with the Washington State Division of Child Support, in which a behavioral intervention was used to increase the number of incarcerated noncustodial parents who requested modifications to their existing child support orders, thereby decreasing the amount of arrears they accrued while incarcerated. The impact of the intervention was found to be statistically significant.