Child support payments to custodial parents decline

(Photo of children at National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony. Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

According to a report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, only 41.2 percent of custodial parents received the full amount of child support owed them in 2009, down from 46.8 percent in 2007.

Most custodial parents (82.2 percent) were mothers.

“Child support income is especially important to families in poverty, and the report shows that increasingly, custodial parents find themselves below the poverty level,” said report author Timothy Grall, a survey statistician in the Census Bureau’s Program Participation and Income Transfers Branch.

All in all, $35.1 billion in child support was owed in 2009 and 61 percent of that total was received.

The report, Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2009, focuses on the child support income that the nation’s 13.7 million custodial parents reported receiving from noncustodial parents living elsewhere and other types of support, such as health insurance and noncash assistance.

These custodial parents had custody of 22.0 million children under age 21 while the other parent lived somewhere else.