This article reexamines the living arrangements of children following their parents' divorce, using Wisconsin Court Records, updating an analysis that showed relatively small but significant increases in shared custody in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These changes have accelerated markedly in the intervening years: between 1988 and 2008, the proportion of mothers granted sole physical custody fell substantially, the proportion of parents sharing custody increased dramatically, and father-sole custody remained relatively stable. We explore changes in the correlates of alternative custody outcomes, showing that some results from the earlier analysis still hold (for example, cases with higher total family income are more likely to have shared custody), but other differences have lessened (shared-custody cases have become less distinctive as they have become more common). Despite the considerable changes in marriage and divorce patterns over this period, we do not find strong evidence that the changes in custody are related to changes in the characteristics of families experiencing a divorce; rather, changes in custody may be the result of changes in social norms and the process by which custody is determined.

Changes in the living arrangements of children have implications for social policy and children's well-being. Understanding who gets custody on divorce--mother, father, or both sharing custody--can also inform our understanding of family organization and the merits of alternative theories of marriage and divorce. We examine physical-custody outcomes among recent Wisconsin divorces in an effort to understand the factors associated with shared custody as well as mother-sole custody and father-sole custody. Although mother-sole custody remains the dominant arrangement, shared custody has increased over a nine-year period. We find that the probability of shared custody increases with parent's income. Prior marital history, parents' ages, the age and gender of children, and the legal process also have an impact on the probability of shared custody. In contrast to shared custody, the probability of father-sole custody decreases with parent's income, while the relationship with other significant factors is generally similar. The notable exception is that, unlike shared custody, we find no evidence for an increase over time in the probability of father-sole custody. We also find that when the father has a higher proportion of the couple's total income, both shared custody and father-sole custody are more likely.

We document the incidence and evolution of family complexity from the perspective of children. Following a cohort of firstborn children whose mothers were not married at the time of their birth, we consider family structure changes over the first 10 years of the child's life-considering both full and half-siblings who are coresidential or who live in another household. We rely on detailed longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin that include information on the timing of subsequent births to the mother and father, and detailed information on earnings, child support, and welfare. We find that 60% of firstborn children of unmarried mothers have at least one half-sibling by age 10. Our results highlight the importance of having fertility information for both fathers and mothers: estimates of the proportion of children with half-siblings would be qualitatively lower if we had fertility information on only one parent. Complex family structures are more likely for children of parents who are younger or who have low earnings and for those in larger urban areas. Children who have half-siblings on their mother's side are also more likely to have half-siblings on their father's side, and vice versa, contributing to very complex family structures-and potential child support arrangements-for some children.

This paper is based on a report prepared under Contract C-680 between the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development and the Institute for Research on Poverty. Any views expressed in this report are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the sponsoring institutions. The authors thank Patricia Brown, CSDE Data Manager, and programming staff of the Institute for Research on Poverty for their outstanding programming and construction of the data files used for this analysis. We thank Youseok Choi for excellent Research Assistance, and Dawn Duren and Elizabeth Evanson for assistance in preparing this manuscript.

Welfare caseloads have fallen dramatically in the last several years, raising questions about the economic well-being of those who left. In this paper we use administrative data from Wisconsin to identify those who left welfare and to provide information on their economic well-being. We provide a context for understanding post-welfare well-being by comparing welfare leavers under early Wisconsin reforms (those who left in the fourth quarter of 1995) with those who left under the later, more stringent TANF program (those who left in the fourth quarter of 1997). We also provide three-year outcomes for those who left under the early reforms to examine changes in economic well-being over time.We find substantially higher rates of exit in the later cohort. In both cohorts, about 70 percent of leavers have earnings in each quarter of the next year. Earnings are lower in the second cohort, a finding consistent with the hypothesis that the new welfare regime pushes people with fewer employment skills into the labor market where they accept lower-paying jobs. Multivariate analyses show that those with higher levels of human capital (education, employment experience, previous earnings) do better when they leave welfare. We measure post-exit income by adding earnings, cash assistance, Food Stamps, and the estimated EITC and subtracting estimated payroll and income taxes. This limited measure of net income neglects other income sources and employment-related expenses. We find that leavers have substantially higher earnings and EITC than they did prior to exit, but the decline in benefits outweighs these increases so that total measured net income in the year following exit is lower. In both cohorts less than one-third of the leavers have higher incomes than they did previously. Official poverty rates are high in both cohorts, over 60 percent, but are especially high in the later cohort. In the first cohort, earnings increase over the three-year period, benefits decline, and overall net income shows small increases.