The Impact of State-Based Eviction Moratoria on Child Maltreatment Report Rates during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background and Purpose: Home eviction can increase the risk of child maltreatment reports by increasing poverty, parenting stress, and family exposure to surveillance. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated financial burden have exacerbated the risk for low-income families and people of color, groups already disproportionally experiencing eviction and maltreatment reports before COVID-19. To prevent COVID-19 transmission and support renters, for the first time on a national scale, policymakers issued temporary eviction moratoria. Despite enacted on the federal level, states varied in implementation approaches including timing and duration. As the moratoria expired, debates grew on whether such support should continue and how existing housing support programs should be refined to better meet families’ needs. Understanding how state variations in eviction moratoria have impacted child maltreatment thus is essential to inform the design of prevention strategies in the recovery era. Leveraging variations in state-based eviction moratoria as a natural experiment, this study examines associations of eviction moratoria with rates of overall child maltreatment reports and various types.

Methods: This study aggregated nationwide state-, county-, and time-levels data from January 2019 to September 2021 to examine the associations of the implementation and expiration of eviction moratoria with child maltreatment report rates. The outcomes of interest were county-level report rates of overall maltreatment, neglect, physical abuse, psychological abuse, and sexual abuse, drawn from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System on bi-weekly basis. The exposure of interest was whether there were any eviction moratoria in place in each county-bi-week, drawn from the COVID-19 Eviction Moratoria and Housing Policy Database. Additionally, county-level confirmed COVID-19 case and death rates, drawn from the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 data, were included to account for COVID-related contextual changes over time specific to each county. Difference-in-Difference models were used to compare changes in maltreatment rates between 1) counties implemented vs. non-implemented moratoria; 2) counties had expired vs. non-expired moratoria.

Results: Among the studied 860 counties in 50 states with child maltreatment report data, about 727 counties in 43 states ever instituted state-level moratoria from March 2020 through September 2021. Descriptive results showed sharp declines in maltreatment reports during the initial shutdown in April-May 2020, followed by gradual increases with the lift of mitigation measures. Difference-in-Difference results showed that on average, counties implemented moratoria had statistically significantly 95 fewer cases of neglect, 34 fewer cases of physical abuse, and 14 fewer cases of sexual abuse, per 1,000,000 children each bi-week, relative to if they had not implemented moratoria. Further, counties following the expiration of eviction moratoria had significantly more increases in neglect, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse reports, relative to if the eviction moratoria had not expired.

Conclusions and Implications: The implementation of eviction moratoria was associated with reduced rates of neglect, physical, and sexual abuse reports, and the expiration of the moratoria was associated with increased rates of neglect, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse reports. These findings suggest that large-scale housing support policies such as the eviction moratoria may help prevent or reduce child maltreatment by assuring families of secure housing.