The Effect of Income on Child Welfare System Involvement

• In Event: Economic Insecurity and CPS Involvement: Bidirectional Risks and Policy Levers

Abstract

Background

The risk for child maltreatment is embedded in a child’s ecological context (Belsky, 1980; Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1986), at the individual, family (micro-system), neighborhood (macro-system), and policy (exo-system) levels. Little existing theory has sought to differentiate the etiologies of child abuse and child neglect. This “neglect of neglect” (Dubowitz et al., 2005) is important, because few existing interventions have been able to reduce its prevalence in society. This may be because mental health and parenting interventions are ineffective for neglect without strong exo-system supports. This is notable, because the predominant focus on the psychopathological origins of child maltreatment has meant that nearly all forms of prevention and treatment are focused on improving parental mental health and parenting quality.

 

Exo-system social policies have important implications for individual-level experiences of economic hardship and poverty. Access to cash, in-kind, and housing supports may buffer many of the financial-based stressors that are thought to influence the risk for child neglect. Economic hardship may lead parents to be unable to provide safe and secure housing for children, and child welfare involvement families have high rates of housing instability (Slack, Font, Maguire-Jack, & Berger, 2017). Of additional concern for physical neglect is the prevalence of parents’ material hardship, or the inability to pay for utilities such as heat, gas, and electricity (Neckerman, Garfinkel, Teitler, Waldfogel, & Wimer, 2016).

 

Notably, there is a dearth of experimental research examining the role of income, poverty, and inequality in child welfare system involvement. Although a number of welfare waiver experiments have since been re-examined for effects on a host of other outcomes (e.g., Bitler, Gelbach, & Hoynes, 2006; Chetty, Hendren, & Katz, 2016), effects on child maltreatment remain unexamined. The current paper is among the first of its kind to experimentally investigate the effect of income on reducing inequalities in child neglect.

 

Methods

The current paper advances both causal inference and policy-relevant solutions by employing an innovative technique to leverage existing experimental studies. Drawing on previously collected experimental data from the Chicago site of the Employment Retention and Advancement Project (2002-2004; N = 1,728), which examined the effect of employment services on TANF participants’ employment and earnings (Hendra et al., 2010), linked to Illinois Department of Children and Family Services administrative data. I use these data to examine the effect of job promotion and raises in wages on child welfare system involvement, including the potential moderating roles of child age, family structure, and race and ethnicity.

 

Results

Results indicate that receiving a raise or moving to a higher paying job decreased the likelihood of being investigated for child neglect and of having a child removed. This finding holds both in the short and long term. Increasing income was particularly impactful for Black families. Overall, findings from the study provide among the first experimental evidence that income is causally tied to child welfare system involvement, and that increasing income is protective. 

Author

• Will Joseph Schneider, University of Illinois
  Presenting Author