Underreporting Child Maltreatment during the Pandemic: Evidence from Colorado

Alexa Prettyman

No 2023-06, Working Papers from Towson University, Department of Economics

Abstract: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools closed abruptly in March 2020, and Colorado issued a stay-at-home order during the month of April. Subsequently, child maltreatment reporting dropped by 31 percent. This paper documents the decline in referrals and reports during 2020 and 2021 in Colorado and predicts counterfactual estimates using two strategies. One strategy assumes the underlying behavior for child maltreatment was unchanged from 2019 to 2020 and 2021, while the second strategy assumes the economic distress and protective factors brought about by the pandemic altered the underlying prevalence of child maltreatment. Consequently, these two approaches yield similar results when investigating referrals, but they differ when investigating screened-in referrals and substantiated reports. I find that the largest reduction in reporting comes from the stay-at-home order, followed by school closings. Lastly, counterfactual estimates suggest that these missed children were suffering from neglect and not abuse. These findings quantify another hardship brought about by the pandemic, underreporting child maltreatment, and underscore the role mandatory reporters play in detecting child maltreatment.

Keywords: Child maltreatment; COVID-19; Underreporting; Colorado; Stay-at-home order. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H12 H75 I18 I31 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2023-09, Revised 2023-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ger and nep-hea
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http://webapps.towson.edu/cbe/economics/workingpapers/2023-06.pdf First version, 2023 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Underreporting child maltreatment during the pandemic: Evidence from Colorado (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tow:wpaper:2023-06

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