Job Market Paper

Income and Child Maltreatment: Evidence from a Discontinuity in Tax Benefits

Poverty is one of the leading predictors of child maltreatment, yet the causal relationship is not well-understood. In this paper I provide new evidence of the effects of income on child protection system (CPS) referrals, investigations and foster care placements. I exploit a discontinuity in child-related tax benefits around a January 1 birthdate, which results in otherwise-similar families receiving considerably different refunds during the first year of a child's life. I use 20 years of linked administrative data from California to determine the effects of this additional income on CPS involvement. A one-time $1,000 transfer to low-income households decreases the number of referrals to CPS in the first three years of a child’s life by approximately 3%. These effects persist throughout the system, decreasing investigations (3%) and days spent in foster care (8%). Effects also persist throughout childhood, reducing CPS involvement through at least age 8. Heterogeneity analyses by allegation and reporter category as well as child race and gender suggest that these effects capture true reductions in maltreatment, as opposed to changes in reporting behavior. These findings suggest that providing low-income families with additional resources during the first year of a child's life may be a fruitful strategy for reducing child maltreatment.

Working Papers

Algorithms, Humans, and Racial Disparities in Child Protective Services: Evidence from the Allegheny Family Screening Tool (with Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Rhema Vaithianathan)

We ask whether providing decision-makers with a machine learning tool can reduce racial disparities. Our context is the implementation of the Allegheny Family Screening Tool (AFST), a predictive risk model that aims to help child protection workers decide which allegations of abuse or neglect to investigate. While the AFST does not dictate investigation decisions, referrals with the highest risk scores are "defaulted" to be screened in. Among this group of referrals, we find that the AFST reduced disparities in investigation rates. Using a triple difference strategy, we also find that the introduction of the AFST significantly reduced disparities in case opening and home removal rates for investigated referrals involving Black vs. White children.

The Effect of Smoking on Mental Health: Evidence from a Randomized Trial (with Katherine Meckel)

This paper estimates the causal effects of a smoking cessation intervention on mental health using data from the Lung Health Study, a randomized trial with five years of follow-up interviews. In the short-run, cessation worsens mental health, likely reflecting the effects of nicotine withdrawal. Long-run effects on mental health are small overall, but mask heterogeneity by gender. For women, cessation leads to improved mental health, driven by decreases in insomnia and nervousness. Men do not experience these improvements, due in part to a small increase in severe disturbances.

Immigration Enforcement and Crime Reporting: Evidence from Child Protective Services

I study the effects of a major immigration reform (Secure Communities) on the incidence and reporting rate of child maltreatment in Hispanic households. Secure Communities ties federal immigration enforcement to local law enforcement, effectively increasing the likelihood of deportation for undocumented immigrants who are arrested for a crime. I find that the implementation of Secure Communities decreased the rate of investigated child maltreatment cases involving Hispanic children, and increased the average severity of investigated cases. There was no effect on the rate of investigated cases involving non-Hispanic children. The effects are concentrated among allegations of neglect, deprivation, and physical abuse referred by non-mandated reporters, including family members, friends, and neighbors.

Work in Progress

Causal Effects of Child Protective Services: Evidence from the Allegheny Family Screening Tool (with Lindsey Lacey and David Simon)

Publications

Anticipation and Environmental Regulation (with Matt Zaragoza-Watkins), 89 Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 255-77 (2018)