Reducing Intergenerational Poverty (2024) / Chapter Skim
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10 Child Maltreatment
10 Child Maltreatment
Pages 209-220
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From page 209... ...
It then reviews what is known about the factors that place children at risk of maltreatment and involvement with the child welfare system. Finally, it evaluates the evidence on effective policies and programs to reduce child maltreatment and child welfare system involvement and on their potential for reducing intergenerational poverty.
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From page 210... ...
The decrease in the rate of victims in 2020 is due in part to the decrease in the number of screened-in referrals during the March through June period. Additional technical notes are available in the annual reports titled Child Maltreatment.
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From page 211... ...
CHILD MALTREATMENT AND CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM INVOLVEMENT AS DRIVERS OF INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY Adult Correlates of Childhood Maltreatment A large literature provides descriptive evidence that children who are maltreated (abused, neglected, or in other ways brought to the attention of the child welfare system) fare worse than their non-maltreated or non-child welfare-involved peers.
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From page 212... ...
(2022) found that children residing in counties with lower child maltreatment report rates had a higher chance of intergenerational income mobility than those in counties with higher maltreatment rates.
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From page 213... ...
, unrelated foster parents, or congregate care. Although they make up only a small share of those who experience maltreatment or child welfare involvement, foster care children are a very important group, as their families tend to be the most disadvantaged and the children themselves tend to face numerous challenges in adulthood.3 There is a large descriptive literature on children who are removed from their homes and placed into some form of out-of-home care.
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From page 214... ...
use the investigator method with administrative data from Michigan to study the effect removal has on involvement in crime. They found that foster care placement reduced adult arrests, convictions, and incarceration.
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From page 215... ...
Factors Leading to Child Welfare Involvement While the literature on the intergenerational impacts of child maltreatment is inconclusive, a parallel literature on the causes of child welfare involvement is more definitive and points to a number of policy approaches that appear successful in reducing involvement. The text portion of this chapter highlights four of the most promising policy-related approaches -- income support, Medicaid, nutrition programs, and some community-focused prevention policies.
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From page 216... ...
. Medicaid Whether expanded access to health care through public programs for low-income families is likely to increase, decrease, or have no effect on reported child maltreatment or child welfare system involvement is theoretically ambiguous.
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From page 217... ...
Fourth, health care providers may serve as a referral source to other programs spanning parenting behaviors, child development, and food and nutrition, which may help reduce a family's likelihood of maltreatment or child welfare system contact. As a result, access to low-cost or free health care may help families meet their children's health and mental health needs and, potentially, developmental and material needs as well, which may result in better care for children and a decreased probability of being reported for child abuse or neglect.
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From page 218... ...
on child maltreatment rates across states and over the 2004–2016 time period. Results indicate that the effect on maltreatment of each additional income generosity policy and of a 5% increase in SNAP caseload size are similar in magnitude, with each resulting in an 8% to 9% reduction in child maltreatment investigations, 9% to 10% reduction in substantiation cases of maltreatment, and 9% to 15% reduction in foster care placements.
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From page 219... ...
This leads us to consider the following promising prevention approaches as indirect approaches to reducing intergenerational poverty: • The most consistent evidence of causal effects on reduced child maltreatment is for direct income transfers to low-income families. • Consistent evidence of reductions in child maltreatment is also found in strong studies of the impacts of the recent Medicaid ex pansions occasioned by the Affordable Care Act.
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From page 220... ...
220 REDUCING INTERGENERATIONAL POVERTY • Expansions of eligibility and benefit levels in food and nutrition programs such as SNAP and WIC have also been linked with reduc tions in child maltreatment. • Some community-level interventions such as the Triple P appear to be promising approaches for reducing child maltreatment.
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