Figure 3.2: Paying and Receiving Parents' Annual Incomes

Figure 3.2 presents the categorized income levels for the paying and receiving parents. The highest proportion of paying parents (27.7 percent) fell into the $30,000 to $44,999 category. A total of 9.4 percent of paying parents fell into the lowest income category, and 2.2 percent had incomes in excess of $150,000. The pattern of income for receiving parents was somewhat different from paying parents in that the most common income category for receiving parents was $15,000 to $29,999 (35.8 percent of non-missing responses), followed by 25 percent in the $30,000 to $44,999 range. The proportion of cases in the higher income ranges was considerably lower for receiving parents than for paying parents. Data were available on the number of children included in all but 390 cases. A total of 90,445 children are included in cases in the database. The majority of cases included either one child (20,500 or 40.3 percent) or two children (22,648 or 44.6 percent). Three children were reported in 12.4 percent (n=6,300) of cases. Because relatively few cases involved four or more children (n=1,367 or 2.7 percent), they were collapsed into a single category for purposes of subsequent analyses.