Child Support

Child support is a private transfer, which for many people is mediated by the government, and which mainly benefits lone parents. Children in lone parent families represented 42 per cent of all poor children in 2003/4. Therefore child support might play an important part in reducing child poverty. Although this was not an aspiration of the 1991 Child Support Act it was certainly the main aspiration of the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000. This paper is a review of the potential of child support in the strategy to end child poverty.