What Can We Make of Unsubstantiated Child Abuse Reports? A New Approach

Malcolm Michael ()
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Malcolm Michael: Department of Economics and Finance, West Chester University, 700 South High Street, West Chester, PA 19383, USA

Review of Law & Economics, 2017, vol. 13, issue 2, 14

Abstract: Only about a quarter of child abuse reports are ultimately substantiated, which has caused some concern among policymakers and the general public. But previous literature suggests that unsubstantiated and substantiated reports may not be much different from each other in terms of child outcomes. We present a Bayesian theoretical analysis of the data-generating process underlying maltreatment substantiation, and then take a new empirical approach by examining the statistical time-series relationship between substantiated and unsubstantiated reports. We show that the two series are cointegrated. This suggests that unsubstantiated reports are not mostly malicious or unfounded, but that they emanate from the same signals as verifiable, substantiated abuse.

Keywords: child abuse; false reporting; unsubstantiated reporting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 J13 K36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1515/rle-2015-0015

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