The potential of child support to reduce lone mother poverty: comparing population survey data in Australia and the UK

Abstract

This paper assesses the contribution that child support makes to Australian lone mothers’ income packages and the proportion lifted out of poverty as a result. Using the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) dataset, we compare the results to a study conducted in the UK. Child support payments were more likely to be received in Australia and, when received, payments reduced lone mothers’ poverty rate by 21 per cent, a greater extent than in the UK. These findings provide important insights for Australia and the UK where debates continue about the configuration of the system and enforcement mechanisms.

The antipoverty effectiveness of child support: Empirical evidence for Latin American countries

“…The impact ranges from 12.7% in Paraguay, to approximately 30% in Colombia and Uruguay. Similar to prior findings for Colombia (Cuesta & Meyer, ) and other developed countries (Hakovirta, ; Meyer & Hu, ; Skinner et al, ), our analyses also show that the largest antipoverty effectiveness of child support is observed among children living in families that are receiving this transfer. Child support brings between 30% and 55% of children receiving this transfer out of poverty.…”

“…Our study makes a number of contributions to the literature (Bartfeld, ; Cuesta & Meyer, ; Hakovirta, ; Meyer & Hu, ; Skinner et al, ). First, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that estimates the antipoverty effectiveness of child support policy in Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay, and the first to provide cross‐national estimates of the effects of child support in Latin America.…”

“…Empirical evidence shows that single‐parent families receiving child support are less likely to be poor than those who do not receive these transfers (Bartfeld, ; Cuesta & Meyer, ; Hakovirta, ; Meyer & Hu, ; Skinner, Cook, & Sinclair, ). However, the vast majority of this literature is focused on a few developed countries, with little evidence on the antipoverty effectiveness of child support in less affluent nations.…”

“…Child support reduces poverty in a wide range of countries (Bartfeld, ; Cuesta & Meyer, ; Hakovirta, ; Meyer & Hu, ; OECD, ; Skinner et al, ; Skinner, Bradshaw, & Davidson, ). The percentage of children in single‐parent families brought out of poverty by child support alone ranged from 6% in the United States (USA) to 50% in Sweden in 2004 (Hakovirta, ).…”

Separated Families and Child Support Policies in Times of Social Change: A Comparative Analysis

“…Evidence from other comparative studies shows that child support is associated with a decrease in poverty among single mother families within a variety of countries; that is when it is paid (Cuesta, Hakovirta, & Jokela, 2018;Hakovirta, 2011;Hakovirta, Meyer, & Skinner, 2019). For example, in the UK and Australia child support payments reduced poverty among single mother families, respectively, by 14 percentage points and 21 percentage points (Skinner, Cook, & Sinclair, 2017). In attempting to reduce child poverty however, one key problem for child support systems is dealing with non-compliance because failure to do so can reduce the effectiveness of child support.…”