Citation

Coulton CJ, Richter FG, Korbin J, Crampton D, Spilsbury JC. Child Abuse Negl. 2018; 84: 170-181.

Affiliation

Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.07.025

PMID

30103090

Abstract

This study examines how changes in the social and economic structure of neighborhoods relate to changes in child maltreatment report rates over an extended period. The panel study design allows us to partition the changes in child maltreatment report rates into a portion associated with how the levels of socio-economic risk factors have changed over time, and a portion related to how the relative importance of those factors in explaining maltreatment report rates has changed over time. Through the application of fixed effects panel models, the analysis is also able to control for unmeasured time-invariant characteristics of neighborhoods that may be a source of bias in cross-sectional studies. The study finds that increases in vacant housing, single parent families and unemployment rates are strongly associated with increases in child maltreatment report rates. Changes in racial/ethnic composition did not produce changes in maltreatment report rates except when they reached extreme levels of segregation. Although poverty rates were predictive of cross-sectional variation in child maltreatment, increases in neighborhood poverty became less associated with increases in child maltreatment report rates over time.

Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Maltreatment; Neighborhood; Panel study