We have seen in Chapter 5 that the assessment of paternafare's antipoverty potential is rather complicated. If we look only at the actual federal and state data on their child support enforcement allocations, we miss the alleged “future cost avoidance” gain that is trumpeted by the policy's supporters. They assert that a tough child support system saves the taxpayer money down the road because the transfer of collections to poor custodial mothers can keep them out of poverty programs in the future. As we saw, however, the potential of child support enforcement to reduce these mothers' poverty rate is quite modest. A substantial proportion of the TANF collections is assigned to the state and shared out between the state and federal governments as reimbursement for TANF program costs. The state and federal governments retain about 55 percent of the funds collected from the payers who are connected to current TANF cases and 15 percent of the collections related to former TANF families. These child support funds do not improve the condition of the poor custodial mother because they are funneled directly into the coffers of the State. Many of the male payers who are designated as absent fathers by the system are themselves unable to support a family because they are incarcerated, lack living wage employment opportunities, or face serious barriers to employment such as ill health and disability.