The U.S. Census Bureau has recently released information on the level of payment of child support. The figures show that in 2009 41.2% of custodial parents received the full amount of child support owed them, down from 46.8% in 2007. The number of these parents who were owed child support payments and who received any amount at all — either full or partial — declined from 76.3% to 70.8% over the period.

“Child support income is especially important to families in poverty, and the report shows that increasingly, custodial parents find themselves below the poverty level,” said report author Timothy Grall, a survey statistician in the Census Bureau's Program Participation and Income Transfers Branch.

Indeed, 28.3% of all custodial parents had incomes below poverty in 2009, up from 23.4% in 2001. Furthermore, they were about twice as likely as the total population to be poor (14.3%). Child support represented 62.6% of the average income for custodial parents below poverty who received full support, compared with 20.8% for all custodial parents.

Other findings of the report include:

• The average amount of child support received by custodial parents who were owed support payments in 2009 was $3,630, or about $300 per month.
• More than half (60.3%) of custodial parents received some type of noncash support from noncustodial parents on behalf of their children. The most common type of noncash support was gifts for birthdays, holidays or other occasions, followed by clothes and by food or groceries. Custodial fathers were more likely than custodial mothers to receive this type of assistance (70.4% compared with 58.1%).
• The majority (83.2%) of the 5.9 million custodial parents owed child support payments in 2009 had arrangements for joint child custody or visitation privileges with the noncustodial parent, not statistically different from the proportion who had such arrangements in 1993.