Almost one in five children in the UK live in a single-parent family, of whom almost one-half are poor (Cribb et al, 2022). In recent years, the government has highlighted the role of child maintenance payments as a means of alleviating child poverty. Yet, in the UK, child maintenance is only received by a minority of single parents. In this paper, using longitudinal data from UKHLS, we investigate the potential of child maintenance to reduce child poverty among single-parent families if all non-resident parents were to provide financial support for their children. Using longitudinal data allows us to assess the incomes of families prior to becoming a single parent, and hence the potential contribution of paying parents to their former families’ income.

We expect that, even if all parents with care received maintenance payments, the impact on single-parent poverty rates would be limited by the amounts non-resident parents have capacity to pay. We evaluate the consequences of paying child maintenance to poverty risks among paying parents’ families. Specifically, we investigate the consequences for stepchildren. We also examine different modes of payment arrangements (including legally agreed arrangements, arrangements made through the Child Maintenance Service, and voluntary arrangements) to evaluate how the timeliness of payments, and their association with household income and poverty, varies across arrangement types.

We find that, while maintenance payments make a significant contribution to the incomes of some families, their capacity to reduce child poverty rates is limited. We conclude with recommendations for the treatment of child maintenance in the welfare system, including proposals for enhancing the capacity of non-resident parents to support their children.

Co-authors

Lisa Waddell, University of Bristol