EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Better Together? A Field Experiment on Human-Algorithm Interaction in Child Protection

Marie-Pascale Grimon and Christopher Mills

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Algorithm tools have the potential to improve public service efficiency, but our understanding of how experts use algorithms is limited, and concerns about resulting bias are widespread. We randomize access to algorithm support for workers allocating Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations. Access to the algorithm reduced maltreatment-related hospitalizations, especially for disadvantaged groups, while reducing CPS surveillance of Black children. Child injuries fell by 29 percent. Workers improved their scrutiny of complementary information emphasized by the algorithm, and targeted investigations to children at greater risk of harm irrespective of algorithm-predicted risk. Algorithm-only counterfactuals confirm human-algorithm complementarity for both efficiency and equity.

Date: 2025-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.08501 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Better Together? A Field Experiment on Human-Algorithm Interaction in Child Protection (2025) Downloads
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:arx:papers:2502.08501

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2502.08501