Benefit level and duration: Age limits for orphan benefits are often the same as for children's allowances, although many countries set a higher age for orphans attending school, undergoing an apprenticeship, or incapacitated. Benefits are usually larger for full orphans (rare) than for half orphans. In some countries they are administered in the child allowance system. There are some countries, far fewer in number, that add dependent child supplements to unemployment insurance benefits.

Adam and Brewer in a 2004 summary for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on how the amount of child-contingent support to which households are entitled has changed since 1975, and relate this to changes in taxes and benefits, the characteristics of households with children, and the costs of children.

• Total spending on child-contingent support has risen from £10 billion to £22 billion per year since 1975.
  
  
• The largest increase has occurred since 1999, with spending rising by half since then. Child-contingent support now accounts for a higher proportion of GDP and total government spending than at any time since 1975.
  
  
• Changes to tax and benefit policies were responsible for only 40 percent of the increase in spending per child between 1975 and 1999. The rest was due to the changing characteristics of families. The large increases since 1999, however, are almost all due to policy changes.
  
  
• Many programmes have been used to deliver child-contingent support since 1975. Over time, child-contingent support has become more related to parents' income, as means-tested programmes and tax credits have grown. Universal child benefit, although maintaining its real value, has declined in importance from a peak of 79 percent of total support in 1979 to 42 percent in 2003.
  
  
• The proportion of child-contingent support going to lone parent households increased faster than the proportion of children in such households between 1975 and 1997. Since 1997, this proportion, but not the level of support, has declined. Changes to programmes have also increasingly emphasized the first child in a household, favored young children over older children, and paid support direct to the main carer in couples.
  
  
• Although few estimates exist of the costs of children since 1975, they suggest that the proportion of parents who receive child-contingent support in excess of the cost of their children is small but has grown over time

The following table is available to view and print in pdf format:

• Table 1.111: Summary of Other Child Conditioned Income Transfers in OECD Countries

References

European Commission, D.G.V, Social Protection in the Member States of the European Union: Situation on 1 January 1998 and Evolution (Luxembourg: Office of the Official Publications of the European Communities, 1999).

Social Security Administration, Social Security Programs Throughout the World-1999 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000).

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