Do employment and type of exit influence child maltreatment among families leaving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families?
Research highlights
► Employment income protects against substantiated maltreatment. ► Employment status does not affect substantiated maltreatment. ► Involuntary exits increase risk of substantiated maltreatment.
Introduction
In 1996, the United States federal government replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These reforms brought sweeping changes to welfare programs, including a broad mandate for recipients to rapidly enter into competitive employment and progress towards attaining self-sufficiency. Strict time limits on benefits and mandatory participation in employment activities are among the requirements that have been implemented by most states. These requirements have had the profound potential to affect the everyday lives of parents and children. Families who fail to comply with the employment services requirements of TANF are subject to sanctions, which can result in the reduction or loss of their cash assistance. Those who do not voluntarily leave TANF before reaching time limits find themselves involuntarily removed from the program. The transition from TANF, whether voluntary or involuntary, can be a critical period as families move from a stable form of financial support to imposed self-sufficiency. The strain of this transition and the possible negative effects on parents and children is the focus of this study.
One of the most visible signs that children are at risk is when their families become involved with the child welfare system. Poor children are more likely to have contact with the child welfare system than non-poor children (Coulton et al., 1995, Zuravin, 1989). Many families that are referred for child protective services are either current or recent recipients of TANF (McDaniel and Shook Slack, 2005, Mersky et al., 2009, Paxson and Waldfogel, 2002). One theory as to why there is such a disproportionate representation of poor families, including those who have been recipients of TANF, in the child welfare system is that the distress caused by financial hardship or perceived material hardship leads to incidences of abuse or neglect (McLoyd, 1990, Shook Slack et al., 2004). Additionally, there is evidence that some components of the cash assistance programs themselves may be a source of strain for parents (McGroder et al., 2000, Morris, 2008), which in some cases may lead to an increase in the risk of child welfare involvement. Despite the fact that a concern for the well-being of children was acknowledged in the debates leading up to welfare reform (Duncan & Chase-Lansdale, 2002), and that this concern been the subject of a number of studies since (Chase-Lansdale et al., 2003, Courtney, 1997, Morris et al., 2001), there remain a number of important questions about how the implementation of TANF has played out with respect to the child welfare system. Furthermore, questions remain about the effects of time limits and sanctions on families leaving TANF and in particular, how those families that experience those types of involuntary exits are faring with respect to child welfare.
This study examines two specific factors that are believed to have an effect on the relationship between a family's exit from TANF and their subsequent involvement with the child welfare system. These two factors are: 1) the type of exit from TANF experienced by the family and 2) the amount of income earned by the mother from competitive employment following the family's exit from TANF. The study uses a unique data set that linked welfare, employment, birth and child welfare records for all families leaving TANF in a large urban county in Ohio in the years following the implementation of welfare reform. Ohio's TANF program has one of the toughest sets of time limits and work requirements in the nation (Pavetti & Bloom, 2001), making it an interesting policy environment to examine whether families leaving welfare for non-compliance with these policies faced any increased risk of child welfare involvement or whether their experience in the labor market mitigated these effects.
Section snippets
Sanctions, time limits and child welfare involvement
There are two main research questions examined in this study. The first research question is “does the type of exit from TANF (voluntary or involuntary) affect the incidence of child maltreatment?” This question explores the effects of involuntary exits, defined as sanctions, time limits, and failed redeterminations, on subsequent child maltreatment events as opposed to those families who exit TANF through voluntary means. The majority of voluntary exits from TANF are typically due to the head
Study population
Families in this study consist of 18,023 female-headed households from a large urban county in Ohio who exited TANF between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2002 and who had a child that was 10 years of age or younger at the time of exit. An exit from TANF was defined as an assistance group with at least one adult and one child that had at least two consecutive months off TANF following at least two months on TANF. If the assistance unit had more than one exit during the study period, only the
Results
While the emphasis of the analysis is on the factors predicting the hazard of experiencing a maltreatment event, it is appropriate to begin with a discussion of the characteristics of the sample. Among the families in the study (N = 18,023), 11.8% (2131 cases) were investigated for child maltreatment and 5.0% (894 cases) experienced a substantiated or indicated finding of child maltreatment. Among those families who experience a substantiated or indicated finding, most experienced a finding of
Discussion
This study examines TANF exiters from one urban county in Ohio, so the key findings presented and discussed here might not generalize to all low-income families, or even to all TANF recipient families in Ohio. However, several of the major findings are worth further discussion. This section will first review the rates of substantiated maltreatment that were present in this study, and then focus on the findings related to the effects of earnings from employment on maltreatment and the effects of
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2020, Child Abuse and NeglectCitation Excerpt :However, relatively few cases (17% in 2017) meet this legal standard (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2019). While prior studies have relied upon substantiated cases or receipt of child welfare services like foster care as the indicator of maltreatment (e.g., Beimers & Coulton, 2011; Ovwigho et al., 2003; Paxson & Waldfogel, 2003), a number of studies have found that substantiated and unsubstantiated children are at similar risk for a wide range of negative outcomes (Hussey et al., 2005; Kohl, Jonson-Reid, & Drake, 2009; Leiter, Myers, & Zingraff, 1994; Putnam-Hornstein, 2011). Other studies have relied on measures that may be a proxy for maltreatment rather than a direct measure of maltreatment (Berger, 2004).
The continuing role of material factors in child maltreatment and placement
2015, Child Abuse and NeglectCitation Excerpt :Paxson and Waldfogel (2002) found that increases in the unemployment rate at the state level were associated with a small but statistically insignificant increase in reports of maltreatment, but that increases in the proportion of children with unemployed fathers were associated with significant increases in reports. In the Beimers and Coulton (2011) study, whether or not the mother was employed in any given month following exit from TANF was not related to risk of substantiated or indicated maltreatment reports. In light of their finding of an inverse relation between the amount of employment income and the risk of such a report after exiting from TANF, it is difficult to know what to make of these findings.
Does unemployment affect child abuse rates? Evidence from New York State
2015, Child Abuse and NeglectRacial disparity in risk factors for substantiation of child maltreatment
2013, Children and Youth Services ReviewCitation Excerpt :More recently, one study showed that only 18% of TANF recipients had undergone child maltreatment investigation (Slack et al., 2007). Furthermore, whether or not TANF leavers had re-entered TANF had no significant association with maltreatment reports or substantiation (Beimers & Coulton, 2011; Ovwigho, Leavitt, & Born, 2003), and, similarly, TANF applicants' prior history of TANF receipt had no significant association with child maltreatment reports (Dworsky, Courtney, & Zinn, 2007). The cited studies of TANF recipients, however, did not compare their samples with samples comprising individuals never applying for or receiving TANF.