Did State TANF Policies Affect Child Abuse and Neglect during the Great Recession? Implications for Primary Prevention

Background and Purpose. Child maltreatment is a costly public health problem that contributes to morbidity and mortality in childhood with consequences that persist into adulthood. Correlations between low income and child maltreatment have been observed consistently over the past four decades. Therefore, the relatively stable rate of child maltreatment observed over the course of the Great Recession has been noted as a surprise to observers given the strong association between economic determinants and child maltreatment. Yet data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) indicates that several states experienced considerable increases in child maltreatment rates during this time period while others experienced declines. We hypothesize that increases in child maltreatment in some states may be partly explained by changes that states made in their economic and social safety net policies during this period. In this study, we examine whether changes in Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) impacted child maltreatment rates from 2004-2014.

Methods. Data and Sample. We examine the effects of TANF policy changes on child maltreatment reports, victims and foster care entries using state/year panel data from NCANDS and the Adoption and Foster Care Reporting System (AFCARS) from 2004-2014. Changes in TANF work sanctions and time limits were drawn from the Urban Institute’s Welfare Rules Database; changes in TANF denial rates were collected from the federal Office of Family Assistance. We adjust for a large number of state level covariates using data from the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, the Current Population Survey, and the March Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS-ASEC). We account for the nation’s opioid epidemic by adjusting for crude death rates due to substance overdose at the state level.

Analytic Approach. To estimate the causal effects of TANF policy changes on child maltreatment outcomes, we use difference-in-difference models, an approach that embeds policy changes as quasi-experiments in a regression model. We use state fixed effects to account for state mandated reporting laws, which did not change over the study period. All analyses were performed in STATA 15.

Results. States that implemented a TANF sanction of loss of all benefits for not working (or not seeking work) experienced increases in child maltreatment victims and foster care entries by 13 percent. States that implemented reductions in TANF time limits to less than five years experienced increases in victims of 29.6 percent and in victims of child neglect, specifically, by 33.5 percent. States with TANF denial rates that increased by more than 20 percent in a two-year period experienced increases in child maltreatment victims by 19 percent and foster care entries by 16 percent.

Conclusions and Implications. Building on past seminal research using causal methods, our findings demonstrate the potential of social safety net policies in the primary prevention of child maltreatment. Results underscore the human and social consequences of federal block grant policies that give states wide discretion in determining the extent of the social safety net.