Christine Skinner

The contribution of child maintenance payments to the income packages of lone mothers

This paper will assess the potential impact of the receipt of child maintenance payments on the income packages of lone mothers. It provides an analysis of the Families and Children Survey (FACS) using the latest 2008 data which involved interviews with parents with dependent children conducted between October 2008 and February 2009. This broadly replicates a previous analysis using 2004 FACS data conducted by Skinner and Meyer in 2006 (although the figures are not directly comparable due to differences in weighting and equivalence factors – see technical notes at end). This 2008 analysis hopes to pick-up any potential changes since the introduction of two recent child maintenance policy reforms implemented in October 2008. The first reform allows lone parents dependent on means-tested social security benefits to opt-out of using the Child Support Agency (CSA). This leaves all parents free to make a private child maintenance agreement without using the old CSA or new statutory scheme (The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission ‘CMEC’). The second change is the introduction of a child maintenance £20 disregard for those on meanstested benefits, allowing those parents to keep more of the maintenance but obviously only if it is paid. The former change may result in more private arrangements being made, but these could be for lower amounts than under the CSA formula as parents will be free to negotiate their own amounts and methods of payment and parents could also agree to provide other types of services in kind or cash lump sums in lieu of child maintenance. The other potential change could be a rise in the proportionate value of child maintenance to the income package of the poorest lone mothers given the £20 disregard. However, at the aggregate level this could be balanced out by the former changes.

A Comparative Analysis of Child Maintenance Schemes in Five Countries

The aims of this special issue were twofold: to provide international research evidence of child maintenance schemes in five countries and to produce a comparative analysis of that research, to show how child maintenance outcomes differ across countries. The research data were collected using a vignette technique. This set up two fictional families, specifying sets of characteristics in order to explore how child maintenance schemes deal with key factors. Decision processes and payment outcomes are explored for applicants who are, for example, lone parent families on low incomes, divorcing families on middle incomes or reconstituted cohabiting families where a new child is born to the non-resident parent; the effects of changes in employment status and shared care arrangements are also considered. This final paper provides a comparative analysis of the vignettes to show how child maintenance outcomes differ across countries, and summarises the key themes that emerge from the individual country papers. Ultimately, the comparative analysis demonstrates that we have only scratched the surface in understanding similarities and differences internationally across child maintenance schemes. This is partly because of the complex interaction between child maintenance schemes and social security systems, which is not always transparent.

Child Maintenance in the United Kingdom

Setting out the child maintenance obligations for separated families has been both a contentious and highly dynamic policy area in the UK. Since 1991 policy has been continually amended by three successive governments who have all searched for a solution to the problem of ensuring that non-resident parents make regular cash payments of child maintenance to support their children (where they can afford to do so). The UK serves as a very interesting case study in its own right as it provides a considerable amount of evidence as well as important policy lessons for other countries which might want to embark on radical change (such as the Netherlands – see Curry-Sumner this volume). Simultaneously, it is a unique policy within the UK as it is, arguably, situated awkwardly on the fringes of both the family law system and the social security system. Therein lies the tension: the boundary between public and private responsibility. Successive governments have attempted to rebalance these private and public responsibilities for supporting children in separated/lone parent families. Currently, in the latest policy formulation, the UK appears to have decoupled the private obligations of child maintenance from the public social security system (which provides means-tested social assistance benefits). This paper discusses these developments and provides new research evidence on the amounts of maintenance expected under the latest policy proposals via the use of vignette techniques.

Social change and policy challenges in developing countries

Abstract Western capitalist economies have an established history of dealing with the pressures arising from social change, such as; increasing rates of divorce and separation; rising numbers of lone parent families and greater labour market participation rates among women. However, there remain many policy challenges resulting from both the consequence of family breakdown and the drive for greater gender equality. East Asian countries and developing regions may face comparable challenges as they are exposed to similar global pressures, though the antecedents of social change may be slightly different. In China for example, high fertility rates led to direct policy action with the introduction of the ‘one child policy’ in an effort to control population size. In contrast, the fertility rate in Korea is one of the lowest in the world following a rapid decline since the 1970s (OECD, 2014). The government is now trying to boost fertility through the provision of more childcare services to support women to both work and care. Such social changes and the policy responses to them could have profound effects on the nature of family relationships in these countries, but little research is currently available.