Math/statistics help requested...

shau · Post by **shau** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:13 am

So I have been reading this law review article arguing that child support laws are discriminatory against men. Two of the facts presented are:

85 percent of custodial parents are women
61 percent of all child support awards are given to women.

Leaving aside the author's argument for a second, I am wondering how those numbers are generated. I mean, if 100 percent of custodial parents received child support then women would receive 85 percent of the child support awards because they are the custodial parent 85 percent of the time. If they only receive 61 percent of the awards it would seem to imply that men are more likely to receive child support in the event that they are the custodial parent, although it is more less likely they would be the custodial parent. I am trying to figure out how much more likely it is that a custodial father will receive support payments than a custodial mother, but I don't know how to figure it out.

Can anyone give me the answer or get me started on how to solve this?

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:36 am

You're missing a key piece of information, which is what percentage of anything recieves support awards.

Consider some number P of split couples with children.

You have 0.85P women custodial parents (85%), and 0.15P men custodial parents

Some percentage of men M recieve child support awards, and some percentage W of women recieve child support. The number of men recieving child support, then, is 0.15PM, and the number of women is 0.85PW.

We know that the fraction of child percent awards that go to women is 0.61, so the fraction going to men is 0.39. So we have about 1.56 child support awards going to women for every child support award a man recieves (0.61/0.39), that is, the number of women recieving child support is 1.56 times the number of men recieving.

This can be written as the equation
0.85 PW = 1.56 * 0.15 PM
Factoring out the total population P gives
0.85 W = 0.23 M
or M = 3.6 W

That is, 3.6% of male custodial parents recieve child support awards for every 1% of female custodial parents. If you know what portion of custodial parents of either gender, or overall, gets support awards, you can substitute into this equation and find the other.

shau · Post by **shau** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 3:22 am

Thanks IGTN, that's basically what I was looking for.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 11:51 am

Go back to the source data. I know the Family Courts of australia publishes it, because this can be sliced and diced so many ways to present whatever view you want to take.

However, I will say that the FCoA undertook a reform program a few years ago because the laws were seen to be sexist by the judiciary, so swings and round about.

Jacob_Orlove · Post by **Jacob_Orlove** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 6:51 pm

In California, when the custodial parent is receiving public assistance, child support is paid directly to the state. I'm not sure how that gets figured into the stats you're looking at--it could be that the state accounts for most of the remaining 39%.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:19 pm

If the numbers are really that low for both genders, I doubt sexism is necessary to explain the discrepancy.

A custodial father almost certainly knows who the mother is and there are records to prove it. This is not necessarily the case for a single mother.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:44 pm

Boolean wrote:If the numbers are really that low for both genders, I doubt sexism is necessary to explain the discrepancy.

A custodial father almost certainly knows who the mother is and there are records to prove it. This is not necessarily the case for a single mother.

This is the most important fact I think. A fair number of women get custody because the man is simply not there. This rate of default woman's custody would expect to be associated with a lack of child support awards. So right away you'd expect the percentage of custodial mothers to be higher than the percentage of custodial fathers and higher than the percentage of women who get child support awards.

Furthermore, in most western countries it is more likely for a man to have a job and more likely for a man to make more money. So I would expect even a fair system to give more child support awards from men to women than the other way around.

Now I have nearly enough demographic data to really evaluate the paper's conclusions. But given the rest of the things about our society that suck, those numbers have the correct greater than symbols between them whether the magnitudes are right or not.

-Username17

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 6:15 am

No, the California figures don't torque the numbers; they're counted like that despite the different method by which payments are usually made in this state.

The idea is that makes it easier for the state to step in and find deadbeats quicker, keep the custodial spouse from wanting, and provide legal cover for the state finding out if the failure to pay is legal or not.

It has been for awhile that the awards were made based upon the job at divorce, and then never changed, even if the ex spouse was no longer able to work because some 'chose not to work' to torment their spouse. The state should intervene in these cases and support the spouse to reduce payments accordingly.

-Crissa

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Wed Apr 15, 2009 6:28 am

In a related note, friend of mine's ex (and the father of her 2 kids) recently killed himself.

This is not considered tragic by anyone I've met. That includes her kids.

The point being the social security her kids get now that he's dead by far exceeds the child support he'd pay, and that's when he actually paid it.