The paper focuses on the development of backed-up alimony policies from 1948 to the present. The theory of the social construction of target populations was chosen as the theoretical context of the text and, thus, attention was devoted to the development of the policy design of the researched policy and the social construction of the target populations of non-financing and single parents.
The authors chose a qualitative approach whereby, via a thematic analysis approach, they studied legislative documentation so as to identify individual instruments of backed-up alimony policy through which they monitored the objectives and characteristics of the design of policies and the social construction of non-financing and single parents. The period under review witnessed a particularly dramatic development involving the gradual weakening of the backed-up alimony and followed by its abandonment in 2011.
A number of legislative proposals have sought to reintroduce the policy, including a draft bill on backed-up alimony which was approved by the Coalition Council in January 2020.