Child Support Receipt Among Single Mother Families: New Evidence from South Korea

Background and Purpose: This article empirically examines the factors associated with child support receipt among single mothers in Korea. After the introduction of laws legalizing and enforcing non-custodial parents’ child support payments in the late 2000s and the establishment of a child support agency in Korea in 2015, Korea is now undergoing a critical period of developing policies intended to increase the child support received and address poverty among single-mother families. However, little empirical research has been conducted on this topic, and thus there is limited evidence available to facilitate policy development.

Methods: This study includes two important analyses regarding single-mother families in Korea. First, using data from a nationally representative census survey in 2010, we provide first evidence that estimates the rate of minor children living in single-parent/mother families among all minor children in Korea. Second, we employ a series of regression analyses to understand the factors associated with child support receipt in Korea. For these analyses, we use the Korean Survey of Single-Parents, which gathered rich cross-sectional data (collected in 2012 and 2015) from a nationally representative sample of approximately 3,000 single mothers. Particularly to understand the impact of policy changes, we employ difference-in-difference analyses of data from mothers who divorced before and after the implementation of child support policies (i.e., the passage of child support enforcement laws in 2007 and the establishment of a child support system in 2015)

Results: Our estimation suggests that 7.0% of minor children in Korea lived in single-parent families in 2010, and 65.4% of them lived in single-mother families. The results from multivariate analyses suggest that welfare program participation might discourage child support receipt, perhaps because in Korea none of the child support received is disregarded in the determination of the receipt of welfare that guarantees a minimum income. Interestingly, noncustodial fathers with higher education levels provide less support compared with fathers with lower education levels (robust results regardless of model specifications), and additional analyses suggest evidence that multiple-partner fertility, which is more prevalent among fathers with higher education (compared with fathers with lower education), is a possible reason. Results also show that some single mothers who are more disadvantaged (e.g., mothers with lower earnings) are more likely to receive support, perhaps because they have greater need. Results from the difference-in-difference analyses provide some evidence that child support enforcement had a positive effect on support receipt in Korea.

Implications: While a significant body of research on child support has focused primarily on European and English-speaking countries, little research has been conducted on how policy and cultural contexts affect child support receipt in East Asian countries. The findings from this study suggest cultural and policy contexts matter in understanding child support receipt among single-mother families. We also identified a list of factors that may have downwardly biased our estimate of the size of single-parent/mother families, emphasizing the importance and the direction of future data development in Korea.