Income and Child Maltreatment in Unmarried Families: Evidence from the Earned Income Tax Credit

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Rev Econ Househ
• Personal Author:
  Berger, Lawrence M. ; Font, Sarah A. ; Slack, Kristen S. ; Waldfogel, Jane
• Description:
  This study estimates the associations of income with both (self-reported) child protective services (CPS) involvement and parenting behaviors that proxy for child abuse and neglect risk among unmarried families. Our primary strategy follows the instrumental variables (IV) approach employed by Dahl and Lochner (2012), which leverages variation between states and over time in the generosity of the total state and federal Earned Income Tax Credit for which a family is eligible to identify exogenous variation in family income. As a robustness check, we also estimate standard OLS regressions (linear probability models), reduced form OLS regressions, and OLS regressions with the inclusion of a control function (each with and without family-specific fixed effects). Our micro-level data are drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth-cohort of relatively disadvantaged urban children who have been followed from birth to age nine. Results suggest that an exogenous increase in income is associated with reductions in behaviorally-approximated child neglect and CPS involvement, particularly among low-income single-mother families.
• Source:
  Rev Econ Househ. 15(4):1345-1372
• Pubmed ID:
  29456463
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC5811204
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  R01 CE002807/CE/NCIPC CDC HHSUnited States/ ; R01 HD036916/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; R24 HD042849/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; R21 HD091459/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; P2C HD058486/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; R01 HD040421/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; R25 HD074544/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; P30 HD003352/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; R01 HD039135/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/ ; T32 HD007081/HD/NICHD NIH HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  15
• Issue:
  4
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:c042e43d7901555879eda52f2b69f252bd11a4077688f94f2cd370c0ee823c02
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/86594/cdc_86594_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 265.41 KB ]