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Lone mothers and child support receipt in 21 European countries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2022

Mia Hakovirta Open the ORCID record for Mia Hakovirta [Opens in a new window]  and
Merita Mesiäislehto Open the ORCID record for Merita Mesiäislehto [Opens in a new window]
Mia Hakovirta*
Affiliation:
INVEST Research Flagship Center, Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Merita Mesiäislehto
Affiliation:
Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

With increasing trends in divorce, separation and multi-partner fertility, more families have become subject to child support policies. This paper explores child support receipt in 21 European countries using 2017–2018 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data. We investigated: (1) cross-country differences in the prevalence and amount of child support received and (2) the determinants of child support receipt among lone mothers across countries. We found that the proportion of lone-mother families receiving child support ranged from 16 per cent in Luxembourg to 75 per cent in the Czech Republic, with large variations in the amount of child support received. Our results suggested that the socioeconomic characteristics of lone mothers, including marital status, education, employment status, number of children and income, were associated with the likelihood of receiving child support in most countries but these associations varied significantly across countries.

Keywords

child supportchild maintenancelone mothersEU-SILC
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 36 - 56
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Social Policy Association

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