Economic conditions and the number of children in foster care

Ioana Marinescu, Fei Tan and Johanna K.P. Greeson

Children and Youth Services Review, 2023, vol. 144, issue C

Abstract: In the late 2010s, foster care capacity was declining. In this study, we show that increasing the affordability of fostering a child could increase foster care capacity. We use administrative data from Adoption & Foster Care Statistics (AFCARS) to examine the association between state-level economic factors and the number of children in foster care from 1996 to 2016. Using a panel regression, we found that a 10 % increase in state foster care payments was associated with a 0.9 % increase in the number of children in foster care in that state. As an example, North Carolina increased its payment rates to foster parents in 2008. Using a triple-difference strategy, we found that this increase led to a 20 % increase in the number of children in foster care relative to children placed in other settings and relative to other states. Second, we examined the role of housing affordability: higher housing prices were associated with a lower number of children in foster care, consistent with the cost of space being a constraint for foster parents. Third, we examined the role of labor market opportunities: a higher minimum wage and higher female employment were associated with a greater number of children in foster care. This result is inconsistent with the idea that foster care is just a job, so that higher pay in other jobs and more time spent in employment would dissuade people from fostering a child. Instead, our results are consistent with foster parents acting out of altruism under financial constraints. Our results suggest that relaxing these financial constraints by, for example, increasing board rates enables people to act on their altruistic motives and foster a child.

Keywords: Foster care; Foster parents; Foster homes; Board rate; Economic conditions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019074092200384X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:cysrev:v:144:y:2023:i:c:s019074092200384x

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2022.106748

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().