Evictions and Neighborhood Child Maltreatment Reports
Lindsey Rose Bullinger, Kelley Fong
Abstract
Each year, nearly 2.5 million evictions are filed in the United States. Recent research links evictions to a host of negative outcomes, but effects on child well-being are less studied, even as evictions are disproportionately experienced by families with children. In this article, we investigate the relationship between evictions and reports of child abuse and neglect, a key indicator of child well-being. Drawing on 5 years of block-group-level administrative data in Connecticut, we find that as eviction notices increase within a neighborhood, reports of maltreatment also increase, even net of zip-code-level factors and time-invariant block group characteristics. The relationship is driven by reports of neglect and is strongest among adolescents (children ages 10–17). These results suggest that mitigating housing insecurity has the potential to reduce child abuse and neglect reports.