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
2. Things you need to know
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. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place. Recipient totals are rounded to the nearest 100.
Not included in the data
This data does not include non-statutory arrangements, such as family-based arrangements, where separated parents have their own agreements.
The ethnic groups used in the data
The data is shown for the following 5 broad ethnic groups:
- Asian
- black
- mixed
- other ethnic groups
- white
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.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-maintenance-service-2012-scheme-experimental-statistics-background-information-and-methodology
3. 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)
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