![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Extensive research has established a strong relationship between poverty and child maltreatment reports (CMR). However, it remains uncertain whether this relationship has strengthened, weakened, or remained constant over the past decade. A stronger relationship would imply an increased socioeconomic disparity in CMR risk, while a constant relationship would suggest that the disparity has not improved. Alternatively, a weaker relationship could provide valuable insights into reducing the socioeconomic disparity in CMR risk. This study examines the yearly variation in the strength of the relationship between child poverty rates and CMR rates at the zip code level in all Illinois zip codes from 2011 to 2018.
Methods:
We complied panel data covering all 1,383 Illinois zip codes from 2011 to 2018. The CMR rate per zip code per year was calculated using all screened-in CMRs in Illinois from 2011 to 2018. We obtained the child poverty rate and control variables from Census data. We used linear regression models with year fixed effects to account for the overall time trend and handle multiple observations. To estimate the poverty-CMR relationship each year, we included the “year × child poverty rate” interactions. We evaluated overall CMR rates, as well as CMR rates specific to racial/ethnic groups and maltreatment types. All estimates were adjusted for a range of control variables and weighted by zip code child populations.
Results:
We found a strong and significant association between child poverty rates and CMR rates, which steadily strengthened in a nearly linear fashion from 2011 to 2018. Specifically, in 2011, a 1-percentage point increase in child poverty rates was associated with a 0.92 per 1,000 increase in CMR rates, while in 2018, the same increase in child poverty rates was associated with a 1.45 per 1,000 increase in CMR rates. This represents a nearly 60% increase in the strength of the relationship between child poverty rates and CMR rates over the study period. We observed that child poverty rates were strongly and significantly related to CMR rates among all White, Black, and Latino children. The poverty-CMR relationships intensified from 2011 to 2018 among White and Latino children, but not among Black children. We also found that child poverty rates were strongly and significantly associated with report rates of neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse, which all strengthened from 2011 to 2018.
Conclusions/Implications:
This study has identified, for the first time to our knowledge, a significant increase in the strength of the zip code-level relationship between child poverty rates and CMR rates from 2011 to 2018 in Illinois. This trend was observed for overall CMR rates, White and Latino CMR rates, and neglect, physical abuse, and sexual abuse report rates. These findings suggest a substantial widening of the gap in CMR rates between high- and low-poverty communities during the 2010s in Illinois. Further research is necessary to understand the underlying reasons for this concerning trend. Appropriate policy actions are required to address this issue and reverse the trend.