Child Maltreatment, Abortion Availability, and Economic Conditions

Marianne P. Bitler () and Madeline Zavodny ()

Review of Economics of the Household, 2004, vol. 2, issue 2, pages 119-141

Abstract: Child maltreatment is a substantial problem in the U.S. yet has received relatively little attention from economists. This article examines the relationship between abortion availability and economic factors at the time children were conceived and subsequent measures of child maltreatment in the U.S. as well as the influence of contemporaneous economic conditions. Our measures of child maltreatment are state-level rates of child abuse and neglect reports, the fraction of children receiving social services, and child deaths and murders. The results indicate that legalized abortion for each successive cohort led to a decline in total reported incidents of child abuse and neglect of about 10 percent and a negative effect on the fraction of children receiving social services. Child deaths and murders are not related to abortion legalization. Medicaid funding restrictions are associated with an increase in substantiated reports of abuse and an increase in murders by relatives or parents; other post-legalization restrictions are not consistently associated with the various measures of child maltreatment. The effects of welfare benefits, average income, and unemployment rates are mixed.

Date: 2004

Downloads: (external link)
http://journals.kluweronline.com/issn/1569-5239/contents (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:reveho:v:2:y:2004:i:2:p:119-141

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().