About child benefit

Abstract

Over the last few weeks, there has been media debate about a further increase in the upper means-test threshold for child benefit.2 The previous 40% increase made in 2018, which received a lot of media attraction, failed to cause an uptick in the expected number of beneficiaries and children receiving the benefit. In anticipation of the new change, likely to come into effect in January 2020, this article explains what child benefit is and how it is calculated, and tries to discover possible reasons for the failure of the 2018 measure. One of them is inadequate information provided to potential beneficiaries, hence on