By Dan Brown and Elisabetta De Cao

Child maltreatment is pervasive, often undetected, and harmful. We investigate whether it is impacted by unemployment by leveraging unique administrative data including all reported cases of child abuse and neglect in the United States from 2004 to 2012. Using an industry shift-share instrument to identify county-level unemployment effects, we find a substantial rise in neglect. The likely channel is lower quality-time spent with children rather than decreased financial investments. Expenditures on children remain stable during recessions. Instead, higher local-area unemployment rate reduces parental childcare time, worsens mental health, and contributes to an increase in one-parent households.

IZA DP No. 16799 Bonn, Germany: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics , 2024. 66p.

This guide begins by describing the problem of child abuse and neglect in the home, and reviewing factors that increase its risks. It then identifies a series of questions to help you analyze your local child maltreatment problem. Finally, it reviews responses to the problem and what is known about them from evaluative research and police practice. Child abuse and neglect in the home is but one aspect of the larger set of problems related to child maltreatment that occurs in a variety of places and by people with varied relationships to the victim.

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