How governments should direct money to families with children is a constant topic of political debate. But the complexity of the ever-changing tax and benefits system makes its overall impact on families anything but transparent, and trends in government support for children hard to distinguish.

The report: to improve our understanding of the way successive UK governments\' have financially supported parents, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has kindly supported the IFS in an analysis of how child-contingent support has changed since 1975, and how this relates to changes to taxes and benefits, the characteristics of households with children, and the costs of children. The report, entitled \"Supporting families: the financial costs and benefits of children since 1975\", and co-authored by Stuart Adam and Mike Brewer:

- Examines how support has varied across households and over time
- Separates the impact of policy from socio-economic changes
- Compares government support for children with available estimates of the actual costs of children.

An earlier report, \"The Benefits of Parenting\", presented the interim findings of this project; \"Supporting families; the financial costs and benefits of children since 1975\" now provides a complete analysis of the available data, including the first comparison of the costs of children with child-contingent support.

The report is aimed at: students, academics, practitioners and policy makers and all those who wish to improve their understanding of how the tax and benefit system treats families with children.