Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper no. 1320-07 Investment in Child Quality Over Marital States Meta Brown Department of Economics University of Wisconsin–Madison E-mail: mbrown@ssc.wisc.edu Christopher J. Flinn Department of Economics New York University E-mail: christopher.flinn@nyu.edu January 2007 This research is supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation and the C. V. Starr Center for Applied Economics at NYU. David Blau, Hanming Fang, John Kennan, Ariel Pakes, Ken Wolpin, and seminar participants at the Institute for Research on Poverty, NYU, Virginia, Wisconsin, Torino, the Society for Economic Dynamics, ESPE, the American Economic Association 2002 Meetings, the UNC/Duke Conference on Labor, Health and Aging, and the Minnesota Applied Micro Workshop provided valuable comments. Hugette Sun provided extensive child support guideline data. We retain responsibility for all errors, omissions, and interpretations. IRP Publications (discussion papers, special reports, and the newsletter Focus) are available on the Internet. The IRP Web site can be accessed at the following address: http://www.irp.wisc.edu.