News Saitama City to pay child support for single parents

The program's purpose is to alleviate the financial and psychological burden on single-parent families, and it is targeted at families in need, such as those receiving child support allowances. The measure is implemented under the condition that the amount of child care expense has been agreed upon between the divorced partners through a notarized or mediation document. Anticipating that 20 people will use the program this fiscal year, the city government has allocated 3 million JPY (approx. USD19,000) in the initial budget for the scheme. According to a national survey, the relative poverty rate, which indicates the percentage of households with incomes significantly lower than the standard amount, was 44.5% in 2021 for single-parent families, the majority of which are single-mother households. Another national survey found that only 28.1% of single-mother families received child support from their ex-spouses in fiscal 2021, and more than half of these families had not made payment arrangements with their divorced partners.

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