Lessons from the New English and Australian Child Support Systems

In the last decade, both England and Australia have reformed their child support systems. While both nations desired to shift the financial burden of child support in single-parent families from society to absent parents, England and Australia enacted different administrative schemes to achieve this goal. In this Article, the author first explores the features of the English and Australian child support systems. The author then proceeds to analyze the merits of the two systems and the implications for other nations in light of the two nations' relative ability to achieve underlying policy goals.