The receipt of more than $75 per week in child support assisted resident parents living apart to secure better quality housing for themselves and their children. For non-resident parents living apart, the payment of child support appeared to have no measurable effect upon the standard of their housing. The ongoing obligation to pay child support...

Most research into child support is based on the experiences of residential mothers and children. The little we know about post-separation fathering often comes from mothers reports. This is problematic as many child support reforms focus on changing the behaviour of non-resident parents (usually fathers) without a complete understanding of the complicated factors that influence...

This paper aims to obtain a better understanding of marriage breakdown in the Australian context, with a particular focus on gender differences in the social correlates of marriage breakdown. It analyses retrospective data from all persons who were currently or had been previously married at Wave 1 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in...

This study investigates gender differences in the associations between social characteristics and men’s and women’s reports of which spouse initiated marital separation. Using retrospective data on 9,147 first marriages from the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey (2001), we find that some social characteristics differentiated between separations initiated by wives compared to husbands...