This book is the foundation of America's child support guidelines. It has probably led to more court-ordered money transfers than any other work in the history of humanity. The book has methodological problems? That just makes it more interesting because the erroneous conclusions did not diminish the book's influence. Weitzman says "divorced women and the minor children in their households experience a 73 percent decline in their standard of living in the first year after divorce. Their former husbands, in contrast, experience a 42 percent rise in their standard of living." It should have been obvious to readers that something was wrong with the research. Weitzman describes women filing lawsuits and men defending them. Why were women going to court asking a judge to reduce their standard of living to 27 percent of what it had been? Why were men paying lawyers and vigorously fighting someone who was trying to make them rich and happy?
Journalists, legislators, and judges didn't ask these basic sanity check questions before advocating or developing child support guidelines that in many states make it straightforward to gain millions of dollars in tax-free child support cash following a one-night sexual encounter. That shows the success of Weitzman's work.
[In case you're curious to know why Weitzman got the numbers wrong, one answer is that if a divorced woman collecting alimony and child support remarried, Weitzman counted her as even poorer. The extra adult in the house was considered an expense and Weitzman didn't bother to investigate whether or not that second husband had a job. So if the reason for the divorce was that the woman was having an affair with her Beverly Hills plastic surgeon and, following the divorce, married him and moved into his Beverly Hills mansion, she would be counted by Weitzman as impoverished.]
This is one of the most significant intellectual works of our time, despite the arithmetic errors.
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