What is the economically and socially optimised child support?

Abstract

The study is based on the principle that children with divorced parents should have the same standard of living as their parents, both parents. Access to education, nourishment and extracurricular activities should be supported at the same level after divorce as before to ensure undisrupted development of the children. This study approaches the sensitive topic of child support payment objectively, adopting well-known techniques from operations research, with the goal to provide a guide to determine “optimised child support payment”. The proposed guide for decision makers aims to mitigate the probability of rising inequality in the separated family and through it in the society as well as reducing the risk of single-parent units slipping into poverty. Using simulations based on German child support data, a dynamic, globally applicable child support payment model is proposed. The objective function is to minimize the differences in the equivalised income of the separated family units, thereby, reducing risk of poverty and the financial stress for the custodial partner. The proposed child support payment scheme is well-defined and child focused and it potentially could address a serious real-world problem, the increasing risk of poverty after divorce for the child and the custodial parent.