Child Support Awards in Britain: An Analysis of Datafrom the Families and Children Study

This paper examines the extent to which mothers that care for children where thefather is non-resident have an award or agreement for child support in place. Datafrom the Families and Children Study are used to explore not only whether mothershave an award or order but the type of award they have. Results show that motherswithout awards are significantly disadvantaged. Moreover, awards were lesscommonplace where there were fewer children, where mothers claimed IncomeSupport, were from an Asian background and where contact between the non-residentfather and his children was infrequent. Private agreements, in contrast to a CSA awardor no award, were more likely where mothers had recently separated, when there wasfrequent contact between the non-resident father and his children, and where childrenwere younger; they were less common among those living in social housing.[...]