Income and child maltreatment in unmarried families: evidence from the earned income tax credit

Lawrence M. Berger (), Sarah A. Font, Kristen S. Slack and Jane Waldfogel
Additional contact information
Lawrence M. Berger: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Institute for Research on Poverty and School of Social Work
Sarah A. Font: University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center
Kristen S. Slack: University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Social Work
Jane Waldfogel: Columbia University School of Social Work

Review of Economics of the Household, 2017, vol. 15, issue 4, No 14, 1345-1372

Abstract: Abstract This study estimates the associations of income with both (self-reported) child protective services involvement and parenting behaviors that proxy for child abuse and neglect risk among unmarried families. Our primary strategy follows the instrumental variables approach employed by Dahl and Lochner (2012), which leverages variation between states and over time in the generosity of the total state and federal earned income tax credit for which a family is eligible to identify exogenous variation in family income. As a robustness check, we also estimate standard OLS regressions (linear probability models), reduced form OLS regressions, and OLS regressions with the inclusion of a control function (each with and without family-specific fixed effects). Our micro-level data are drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth-cohort of relatively disadvantaged urban children who have been followed from birth to age nine. Results suggest that an exogenous increase in income is associated with reductions in behaviorally approximated child neglect and CPS involvement, particularly among low-income single-mother families.

Keywords: Child abuse and neglect; Child protective services; Child welfare; Earned income tax credit; Fragile families and child wellbeing study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H53 H75 I38 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11150-016-9346-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to 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:kap:reveho:v:15:y:2017:i:4:d:10.1007_s11150-016-9346-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/11150/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11150-016-9346-9

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Economics of the Household is currently edited by Shoshana Grossbard

More articles in Review of Economics of the Household from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().