Temporary Stays and Persistent Gains: The Causal Effects of Foster Care

Max Gross and E. Jason Baron

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2022, vol. 14, issue 2, 170-99

Abstract: Six percent of children in the United States enter foster care by age 18. We estimate the effects of foster care on children's outcomes by exploiting the quasi-random assignment of child welfare investigators in Michigan. We find that foster care improved children's safety and educational outcomes. Gains emerged after children exited the foster system when most were reunified with their birth parents, suggesting that improvements made by their parents were an important mechanism. These results indicate that safely reducing the use of foster care, a goal of recent federal legislation, requires more effective in-home, prevention-focused efforts.

JEL-codes: H75 I21 J13 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20200204 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E127441V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20200204.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20200204.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:14:y:2022:i:2:p:170-99

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/app.20200204

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().