The recording of child support in research and administrative datasets Implications for sole parent finances and policy reform Kay Cook, PhD Vice Chancellor’s

The recording of child support in research and administrative datasetsImplications for sole parent finances and policy reform

Kay Cook, PhD

Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow

Centre for Applied Social Research

Child support in Australia

• Legislation introduced in 1988/89 to combat the poverty experienced by single mothers and their children, and burgeoning public expenditure supporting this group

• 87% of recipients are women (Child Support Agency 2010)

• Since inception of the Child Support Scheme:–Single mother poverty has remained high–Child support compliance reporting is problematic

–government claims of high compliance rates–debts currently in excess of A$1.25 billion (Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, 2013)

–Approx. 15% of payers legally minimise their incomes for child support assessment purposes or fail to lodge tax returns

RMIT University © 2012 Centre for Applied Social Research 2

Problems with child support accounting and the limits of ‘evidence based policy’

• While child support compliance has been flagged as being of particular concern to women, there is a paucity of evidence to substantiate women’s claims

• The research evidence base is problematic:–Reviews of the research literature show the evidence base is ‘broad and shallow’ (Smyth 2002); and

–Links development of inequitable child support policy outcomes with the inadequacy of available data (Millward & Fehlberg 2013; Natalier and Cook 2012)

• The bureaucratic evidence base is also flawed:–Private transfers are assumed to be 100% compliant unless stated otherwise


The research• 19 low-income single mothers who were part of a larger survey

study of 253 women

–In receipt of welfare benefits, which then includes a requirement that they seek child support in order to receive above the base rate of Family Tax Benefit

–Child support payments reduce the value of FTB payments

• In-depth interviews about their child support experience

• Income and expenditure logbooks conducted monthly over an 18-month period

• Surveys conducted at baseline (month 0) and then again at month 9 and month 18

–How women talked about child support, including how they reported child support to Australia’s welfare agency (Centrelink) compared with how they recorded child support in logbooks and surveys


Child support ‘on the books’ and child support ‘on the ground’

• Three important departures from policy intent

1. Women often ‘smoothed’ accounts of their experience to achieve strategic ends or fit neatly into survey and administrative response options

2. The calculation of child support liabilities using the formula differed from women's’ experience

3. The recording of women’s child support reality and the enforcement of payments in-full and on-time were found to be inadequate

• In all three cases, the complexity and interpersonal politics of women’s child support arrangements was obscured

• Resulted in financial benefits to men and the state


The recording of child support expected and received

• Sally (child support order for A$275 per month). Received:–Month 1: $275–Month 2: $275 ?–Month 3: _____ (expected amount recorded as $0)

• Monica (child support order of $770 per month). Received:–Months 1-3: _____–Month 4: _____ (expected revised to $0)–Month 5: _____ (expected revised to $149, but not paid)–Month 6+: $149 (each month was a month in arrears)


The recording of child support expected and received

• Sally (child support order for A$275 per month). Received:–Month 1: $275–Month 2: $275 ?–Month 3: _____ (expected amount recorded as $0)

• Monica (child support order of $770 per month). Received:–Months 1-3: _____–Month 4: _____ (expected revised to $0)–Month 5: _____ (expected revised to $149, but not paid)–Month 6+: $149 (each month was a month in arrears)


How payments are recorded in administrative datasets

• While Sally didn’t report that she expected payments in most of the surveys, she did keep a running tally of payments in her head:–“So now he’s, $273 that technically he’s supposed to pay me. As for the beginning of – or I think the end of July, it was $2,600 or something outstanding”

• While often not recorded in surveys, because payments were unlikely, these payments were important to calculating correct benefit entitlements:–“When I applied for the part-pension, I asked [Centrelink] to set it where they took, I asked them to pretend that I was getting paid child support, so that way, if I ever did get the money, I didn’t have to pay them back”


The financial impact of incorrect reporting and recording

“I applied for Bond Assistance when I first moved. And I couldn’t get it because I was assessed as $23 a week [income] over the [means tested eligibility] limit. And that was based on his [payer parent’s] supposed child support. And I said, ‘He hasn’t paid child support for three months’” (Danielle).

“Centrelink don’t take missing child support into account. In regards to how much rent I pay, this is a Ministry of Housing [property]. It’s saying I get $70 a month [in child support], and I’m going, ‘I don’t get that $70 a month’. But they say, ‘You will’. And I said, ‘Yeah, but I don’t have it now and you’re making me pay the extra amount of rent. It says [in their computer system] that I get an extra $70 which means I can afford and extra $30 in rent And, you know, I’m not getting the $70” (Monica).


Child contact and child support

“He [payer father] hounded me and hounded me to tell them [the Child Support Agency] that he had [daughter] overnight when he didn’t. In the end, I couldn’t stand it anymore and I rang up the [CSA] and lied, saying that he had her 50 or 60 nights a year. But a few months later I rang them back and told them the truth, because I was cutting off my nose [by receiving a lower child support assessment] to spite my face” (Helen, contact recorded in the survey as ‘at least once a week’)

“When he [paying father] wasn’t having them [contact with the children] he really should have been giving me more [child support] but he didn’t because he said he is having them” (Belinda, contact recorded in survey as ‘at least once a week’, with the word ‘phone’ written in the margin)


Discussion and conclusions• Women had difficulty conveying an accurate representation

of:–the complexity of their child support experience–the social context and power relations that shaped why their reports were often inaccurate or obscure

• These inaccurate representations had negative repercussions for women individually, and as a group–Less benefits, more rent, less child support owed–Inadequate data to lobby for policy reform

• These inaccuracies produced benefits for payers and the state–Less child support owed by payers–Less benefits paid, more government housing rent collected


Documents

The recording of child support in research and administrative datasets Implications for sole parent finances and policy reform Kay Cook, PhD Vice Chancellor’s