In many developed countries lone parent families face high rates of child poverty. Among those lone parents who do get child maintenance there is a hidden problem. States may retain all, or a proportion, of the maintenance that is paid in order to offset other fiscal costs. Thus, the potential...

This article uses the Luxembourg Income Study datasets from circa 2004 to analyse the contribution child maintenance makes to the reduction of child poverty. The countries compared are Canada, UK, USA, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland representing countries with different child...