Child Support and Partnership Dissolution: Evidence from the UK

This paper studies the determinants of partnership dissolution and focuses on the role

of child support. We exploit the variation in child support liabilities driven by an

important UK policy reform to separately identify the effects of children from the

effect of child support liability. We find strong evidence that an increase in the child

support liability significantly reduces dissolution risk. Our results suggest that child

support criteria that are based on the non-custodial parent’s income, compared to

criteria based on aggregate incomes of both parents, would imply much smaller

separation rates.