Case Study 4
The situation
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They shared care exactly equally, with their daughter spending one week with one parent, one week with the other. During weekdays, whoever has the daughter has to spend £10 per day on childcare. |
Both parents work for at least 30 hours for £100 net income per week. The mother receives Child Benefit.The result
The parent who claims Child Benefit ends up with much more money than she earns, because of all the money that the government supports her with - Child Benefit, Working Families Tax Credit, and childcare tax credit.
The parent who doesn't claim Child Benefit, in spite of earning exactly the same, and caring for their daughter exactly the same, ends up with about half the money he earns.
Alternative situation
 Suppose instead that they had previously decided that they needed more money to be provided by the government. So they had agreed that the mother should look after the child full time. |
The result
The mother retains £25.05 less per week as a result of caring for the children full time (while still working and using childcare each working day).
The father now retains £95 per week. So by giving up care of the children, he has become £43 better off. (He may use some of it to privately subsidise the mother).
Taxpayers pay £36.95 extra per week to enable the father to be £43 better off by never seeing his child. Taxpayers are subsidising him by a large amount to abandon his children, at the expense of the mother.
This is an HTML transcription of an article written in September 1999, hence the benefits rates, the references to the White Paper, etc.