Longitudinal Patterns of Neglect and Poverty across Development: The Effects of Service Receipt

Background and Purpose: Child neglect is the most common form of maltreatment. Approximately 75% of child protection cases each year are due to neglect (USDHHS, 2022), yet it remains less studied than other forms of maltreatment. Neglect may be as harmful as other types of maltreatment, with documented effects on brain development, emotional regulation, and cognition (Jackson et al., 2022; McLaughlin et al., 2017). Neglect frequently co-occurs with family poverty, which itself hampers development and achievement (Brooks-Gunn et al., 2021; Hyde et al., 2020). While prior research has focused on whether poverty causes neglect, less is known about whether there are common experiences of neglect and poverty over time and whether child welfare and means-tested services are effective in reducing the likelihood of future neglect (CWIG, 2023). This study analyzed two related questions leveraging the LONGSCAN data (Runyan et al., 1998): 1) How often do youth who are exposed to neglect and/or poverty transition between those states across time? 2) How does receipt of services affect the likelihood of those transitions?

Methods: We categorized children based on their exposure to neglect (using screened-in allegations from administrative CPS records) and poverty (based on household size, income, and the federal poverty line at the time) in three developmental time periods (ages 4-8, 8-12, and 12-16). Children were categorized as being exposed to Poverty, Neglect, Neither, or Both. Service use items were combined into three main categories: poverty (e.g., job support), neglect (e.g., respite or emergency medical care), or other services (e.g., substance use treatment). Next, we examined rates of transitions between states across the three periods (e.g., how often did someone who was exposed to poverty between ages 4-8 stay in poverty or transition to a different exposure group between ages 8-12?). Finally, we estimated multinomial regression models of the likelihood of transitioning between groups on service receipt while controlling for prior exposures.

Results: Membership in the Neglect and Both groups declined over the three developmental periods, with poverty remaining fairly stagnant with small declines over time. At ages 4-8, 6.5% of children were categorized as Neglect, 41.0% Poverty, and 12.3% Both. At ages 12-16, the rates were 3.8% Neglect, 37.1% Poverty, and 5.4% Both. In terms of transitioning between states, the Neither (63.7% and 73.1%) and Poverty (44.1% and 64.8%) groups were most likely to remain the same across both transitions. In the multivariate models, poverty-type service receipt was related to a higher likelihood of membership in the Poverty or Both group in the next time period. On the other hand, neglect-type services were not statistically significant in neglect or Both in the next time period.

Conclusion: Unsurprisingly, neglect declined throughout development while poverty persisted. Notably, it appears that service receipt does not reduce the likelihood of poverty or neglect. Rather, it seems that poverty service receipt, rather than effectively reducing poverty, may actually be an indicator of need. Neglect and poverty are intermingled phenomena - researchers should continue to explore the role of services in reducing both neglect and poverty.