Child maintenance: The eligible population in Great Britain
Working Paper No. 41
By Chris Bullen
The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill, published in June 2007, contains measures to reform the policy and delivery of child maintenance in the UK, establishing the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (C-MEC) a non-departmental public body to replace the Child Support Agency (CSA), simplifying the way maintenance is calculated and providing tougher enforcement powers to collect maintenance arrears.
This paper uses the 2005 data (Wave 7) from the Families and Children Study to examine the households eligible for child maintenance payments in Great Britain. It examines the characteristics of this group as a whole and the maintenance arrangements that they have in place; including those parents who use the CSA, make voluntary arrangements, use the courts or have no arrangements at all.
October 2007
ISBN 978 1 84712 290 2 Paperback
Child maintenance: The eligible population
in Great Britain 
(747KB)