There is a new version of this page. View the latest version.
1. Main facts and figures
- as at December 2018, 85.6% of recipients of child maintenance were from the White ethnic group (not counting payments arranged privately)
- 12.5% of recipients of child maintenance were from ethnic minority groups, and the ethnicity wasn't known for 1.9% of recipients
- for comparison, according to the 2011 Census, 83.7% of lone parents with dependent children were White, 8.3% were Black, 4.2% were Asian, 2.9% had Mixed ethnicity, and 0.9% were from the Other ethnic group
Things you need to know
A recipient of child maintenance may have more than one statutory arrangement through the Child Maintenance Service. In this case, they will be counted more than once.
This data does not include non-statutory arrangements, such as family-based arrangements, where separated parents have their own agreements.
The ‘Unknown’ ethnic category includes people whose ethnicity wasn’t stated or recorded, or where their record couldn’t be matched.
What the data measures
This data measures the number of child maintenance statutory arrangements managed by the Child Maintenance Service. The data is broken down by the ethnicity of the parent receiving the child maintenance.
The receiving parent has the main day-to-day care of the children.
Child maintenance is financial support between separated parents to help with the everyday living costs of looking after children. If they agree, separated parents can arrange child maintenance themselves. This is called a ‘family-based arrangement’. A family-based arrangement is a private way to sort out child maintenance. Parents arrange everything themselves and no-one else has to be involved.
The Child Maintenance Service is for when the parents can’t agree to a family-based arrangement. The Child Maintenance Service can calculate the amount of maintenance to be paid and parents can then arrange the payments between themselves or the Child Maintenance Service can collect and manage the payments between the parents.
The Child Maintenance Service replaced the Child Support Agency (CSA).
The ethnic categories used in this data
The data is broken down into the following 5 broad ethnic groups:
- Asian
- Black
- Mixed
- Other ethnic groups
- White
2. By ethnicity
| Ethnicity | Percentage | Number |
|---|---|---|
| All | 100.0 | 463,300 |
| Asian | 3.4 | 16,000 |
| Black | 4.8 | 22,200 |
| Mixed | 3.0 | 13,700 |
| White | 85.6 | 396,800 |
| Other | 1.3 | 5,800 |
| Unknown | 1.9 | 8,800 |
Download table data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV) Source data for ‘By ethnicity’ (CSV)
Summary of Child maintenance recipients By ethnicity Summary
This data shows that:
- as at December 2018, 85.6% of recipients of child maintenance were from the White ethnic group (not including payments arranged privately)
- 4.8% of recipients of child maintenance were Black, 3.4% were Asian, 3.0% had Mixed ethnicity, and 1.3% were from the Other ethnic group
- for comparison, according to the 2011 Census, 83.7% of lone parents with dependent children were White, 8.3% were Black, 4.2% were Asian, 2.9% had Mixed ethnicity, and 0.9% were from the Other ethnic group
3. Methodology
Administrative data is data generated and stored on the Child Maintenance Service computer systems. The Child Maintenance Service stores information on all parents using the service.
To reduce the amount of people whose ethnicity wasn’t known, records are matched to other benefit systems managed by the Department for Work and Pensions.
Rounding
Percentages are rounded to one decimal place. Recipient totals are rounded to the nearest 100.
Quality and methodology information
4. Data sources
Source
Child Maintenance Service statistics
Type of data
Administrative data
Type of statistic
Experimental statistics
Publisher
Department for Work and Pensions
Publication frequency
Quarterly
Purpose of data source
This data gives an overview of the performance of the Child Maintenance Service with the most up-to-date statistics and breakdowns.
5. Download the data
measure,measure_type,ethnicity, ethnicity type, time, time type, time type,value,numerator, denominator