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Add child maintenance planning docs page (#669)#1714

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Add child maintenance planning docs page (#669)#1714
vahid-ahmadi wants to merge 1 commit into
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vahid-ahmadi/issue-669-child-maintenance-plan

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Summary

  • Child maintenance #669 is filed as a planning tracker (CSJ paper on the parent-poverty trap, plus gov.uk's CMS methodology PDF). Persist the agreed scope in-repo as a "planned: not yet modelled" page mirroring the BiK / firm-VAT pattern.
  • New page at docs/book/programs/gov/cms/child-maintenance.md covering:
    • the current state — generic maintenance_income / maintenance_expenses inputs flowing through market_income and HBAI, but not distinguishing child from spousal maintenance and not encoding the UC asymmetry,
    • the UC asymmetry flagged by the CSJ Hidden Parent Poverty Trap paper — recipient gets a full disregard, payer gets no deduction — and the work-incentive cliff it produces,
    • Phase 1: disambiguate inputs into child_maintenance_received / child_maintenance_paid (plus the FRS routing needed in policyengine-uk-data),
    • Phase 2: fix the UC asymmetry in uc_applicable_income,
    • Phase 3 (optional): derive the CMS formula itself for reform analysis, with the gross-income-band rate table reproduced from SI 2012/2677,
    • data needs (FRS for inputs, CMS statistics for calibration) and primary references — Child Support Act 1991, SI 2012/2677, the DWP "how we work out child maintenance" PDF, and the CSJ paper.
  • Pure documentation; no parameter or variable changes.

Test plan

  • Markdown lints cleanly (table, admonition, link references).
  • Docs build job picks up the new page under programs/gov/cms/.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

#669 is filed as a planning issue. Persist the scope in-repo as a
"planned: not yet modelled" docs page mirroring the BiK / firm-VAT
pattern.

The page covers:

- the current state: maintenance_income / maintenance_expenses exist as
  generic inputs deducted from market_income, but do not distinguish
  child maintenance from spousal and do not encode the UC asymmetry,
- the CSJ-identified Universal Credit asymmetry (recipient: full
  disregard; payer: no deduction) and why that produces a poverty
  trap for paying parents on UC,
- Phase 1: disambiguate inputs into child_maintenance_received and
  child_maintenance_paid (plus the FRS routing needed in
  policyengine-uk-data),
- Phase 2: fix the UC asymmetry in uc_applicable_income,
- Phase 3 (optional): derive the CMS formula itself for reform analysis,
  with the gross-income-band rate table from SI 2012/2677,
- data needs (FRS for inputs, CMS statistics for calibration) and
  primary references (Child Support Act 1991, the CMS Maintenance
  Calculation Regulations 2012, the gov.uk how-we-work-out PDF, and
  the CSJ paper).
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