Making Neighborhoods Safe for Children: Differences in the Relationship Between Neighborhood Structure and Maltreatment Rates for Black, Hispanic and White Children

Background and Purpose:

Through the Department of Education's Promise Neighborhoods and HUD's Choice Neighborhoods programs, the Obama Administration has signaled a strong interest in place-based approaches to ameliorating social problems. Research has linked neighborhood structural factors to child maltreatment rates (Coulton et al., 1999; Coulton & Korbin, 1995; Drake and Pandey, 1996; Freisthler, 2004; Freisthler et al., 2004; Freisthler et al., 2005; Klein, 2009; Korbin et al., 1998; Merritt, 2009), suggesting that place-based interventions may be a promising avenue for reducing child abuse and neglect.

Several of these studies have measured the relationship between the racial/ethnic structure of neighborhoods and child maltreatment rates, but only Drake et al. (2009) attempted to weigh the evidence for competing theories of how neighborhood structure affects child maltreatment risk, focusing specifically on maltreatment of Black children. The proposed presentation would describe a study that extends Drake et al.'s (2009) work by comparing the influence of two dimensions of neighborhood racial/ethnic structure -- ethnic heterogeneity and ‘being out of place' as a local minority -- on Black, Hispanic and White children's risk of maltreatment. Ethnic heterogeneity may decrease residents' social cohesion and capacity to enforce prosocial norms regarding acceptable parenting and being a local minority may increase the visibility of questionable parenting.

Methods: A series of geospatial regressions were conducted using referral rates for each of the three ethnic groups as the dependent variable. For each racial/ethnic group, an initial regression was conducted that included known neighborhood-level predictors of child maltreatment rates: concentrated disadvantage, residential mobility, the child to adult ratio, male to female ratio, percentage of elderly population, percentage of immigrants, and percentage of home owners. Concentrated disadvantage (Wilson, 1987) was computed using the percentage of poor families, unemployed, welfare recipients, and female headed households in census tracts. Concentrated advantage was defined as the percentage of families with incomes over $75,000. Then, the variables representing ethnic heterogeneity and ‘being out of place' were added to the base model separately in turn to determine: (a) if they predicted increased maltreatment rates and (b) which of the two constructs made the greater contribution to overall model fit.

Results: Results indicate that that both constructs contribute to maltreatment risk for White and Black children, although ethnic heterogeneity is associated with better model fit for White children and being a local minority is associated with better model fit for Black children. For Hispanic children, ethnic heterogeneity increases maltreatment risk, but ‘being out of place' as a local minority does not.

Conclusions and Implications: Neighborhood-based family support initiatives should avoid a one-size-fits-all approach to child abuse prevention and should strategically consider the racial/ethnic make-up of targeted communities. We must make a concerted effort to address the subjective experiences and cultural norms of particular ethnic groups as they live amongst high concentrations of their same ethnic group or in highly diverse communities.