Providing economic relief to struggling families can lead to another positive effect — fewer cases of child neglect, according to new research by the 91̽��.

A 10% increase in a common benefit for low- to moderate-income working families, the Earned Income Tax Credit, led to a 9% decrease in the annual number of reports of child neglect made to child welfare agencies over a 14-year study period. That’s a significant impact, researchers say, and can inform future social policies.

The study is relevant to current policy actions, as President Joe Biden has recently proposed an as part of his new stimulus plan.

“The EITC is an important part of the U.S. safety net that has been shown to substantially reduce child poverty. Our results add to growing evidence that policies that improve family economic security can also prevent child maltreatment,” said , a doctoral student at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the UW.

She is lead author of the published Jan. 19 in the journal Child Maltreatment.

Child maltreatment is a common problem in the United States, with an estimated subject to a child protective services investigation before they turn 18. The stress of poverty has been linked to child abuse and family instability, and other research has explored the impact of different economic policies on child-abuse prevention. The 91̽��study is the first to focus on the Earned Income Tax Credit – a program designed to assist lower-income families, often with a tangible benefit in the form of a tax refund – and its potential association with reports of child maltreatment made to child welfare agencies across the U.S.

The is provided by both the federal government and 28 states, and eligibility and credit size vary with income and family size. 91̽��researchers focused on the generosity of refundable state EITCs, noting that such a benefit has been found .

The research team analyzed the number of child abuse and neglect reports to local and state agencies from 2004 through 2017 and the correlation with the EITC program at the state level. The team hypothesized that the more generous a state’s EITC, the more necessities, such as child care or rent, a family can put the money toward, potentially alleviating some of the stress that can lead to child maltreatment. Over the course of the study period, many states altered their level of benefit as a percentage of the federal tax credit, while others generally held steady. Minnesota, for example, provided an average of 33% of the federal credit, depending on household income, while Oklahoma provided 5% of the federal credit before making its EITC nonrefundable in 2016.

With the child abuse and neglect data, the 91̽��team counted all reports of maltreatment, rather than just those reports that were found to be substantiated, reasoning that . Taking all states into account – those with and without an EITC — during the study period, states averaged nearly 4,400 maltreatment reports per 100,000 children each year.

When annual state EITC benefits were taken into account, the team found maltreatment reports, particularly those of neglect, declined as benefit levels rose: A 10 percentage-point increase in state-level benefits was associated with 241 fewer reports of neglect per 100,000 children. The effect was even more pronounced in the number of neglect reports on children from infancy through age 5, the age range at which .

Put another way, a 10 percentage-point increase in the refundable EITC benefit led to a 9% drop in rates of reported child neglect.

“This study highlights the importance of investigating the impact of social policies on health. Violence is a health issue with multiple forms, such as child maltreatment. An emerging body of evidence is empirically demonstrating that violence prevention can be an added benefit of social policies that were not necessarily enacted with that specific goal originally. This study is the most recent addition to that literature,” said , an associate professor of epidemiology at the UW, director of the Violence Prevention Section at the , and the principal investigator of the that supported this study.

While child neglect showed a trend, the link between EITC benefits and reports of specific types of abuse – physical, sexual and emotional – was not statistically significant. Researchers note that child abuse rates, in general, have declined much more significantly than neglect rates in recent decades, while neglect is found in .

Child neglect, too, may be more distinctly associated with poverty, potentially making some interventions more effective in preventing certain types of maltreatment than others.

“Child neglect often involves the failure of a caregiver to provide children with necessities, such as food, shelter and basic supervision. Additional income provided to families through the EITC can improve parents’ abilities to meet these basic needs,” Kovski said.

Researchers say the findings point to the fundamental value of an economic policy – the EITC – as a child-maltreatment prevention strategy. In other words, proactively improving financial stability among families may mitigate the circumstances that lead to child neglect and abuse.

The study was funded by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Co-authors were of the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the UW; and of the 91̽��Department of Epidemiology; and of  the 91̽��Department of Epidemiology, the Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center and the 91̽��Department of Pediatrics.

For more information, contact Kovski at kovskin@uw.edu.

In the United States, suicide is twice as common as homicide — and more often involves firearms — but public perception is just the opposite.

News reports, movies and TV shows may contribute to the perception of a high risk of firearm homicide, authors of a new study say, leaving a substantial gap between ideas and reality and potentially leading to further danger.

Now, first-of-its kind research, led by the 91̽��, Northeastern University and Harvard University, delves into public perceptions of gun violence and the leading causes of death in the U.S. The , published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, seeks to facilitate national public discussions about firearm ownership and storage.

“This research indicates that in the scope of violent death, the majority of U.S. adults don’t know how people are dying,” said , lead author and doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the 91̽��School of Public Health. “Knowing that the presence of a firearm increases the risk for suicide, and that firearm suicide is substantially more common than firearm homicide, may lead people to think twice about whether or not firearm ownership and their storage practices are really the safest options for them and their household.”

To analyze national public perceptions, researchers used data from the 2015 National Firearms Survey, a web-based survey of nearly 4,000 U.S. adults. In that survey, individuals were asked to rank the relative causes of violent death in their state over the past year. The data were then compared to each state’s official death count. The results indicated that although suicide was more common than homicide in all 50 states, the majority of respondents did not identify it as such.

“The relative frequencies that respondents reported didn’t match up with the state’s data when we compared them to vital statistics,” Morgan said. “The inconsistency between the true causes and what the public perceives to be frequent causes of death indicates a gap in knowledge and a place where additional education can be helpful.”

Researchers say education about the actual risks is critical. If people believe homicide is the top risk, for example, they might purchase a gun to protect themselves. And without an understanding of the high risk of suicide, people may be less inclined to store firearms safely.

To Morgan and her colleagues, this education on firearm risks needs to extend to the media and entertainment industries.

“By having mass media and other communication mechanisms enable further discussions of suicide, we, as a society, can have a more informed conversation about suicide prevention,” Morgan said.

Moving forward, the researchers are interested in learning more about how people form their perceptions of gun violence, in order to begin shifting those beliefs.

“We know that this is a mixture of mass and individual communication, but what really leads people to draw the conclusions that they do?” Morgan said. “If people think that the rate of homicide is really high because that’s what is shown on the news and on fictional TV shows, then these are opportunities to start to portray a more realistic picture of what’s happening.”

Contributing authors of the study were , the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence and associate professor at the 91̽��School of Public Health; , professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and , professor at Northeastern University Bouvé College of Health Sciences.

The research was funded by The Joyce Foundation and the Fund for a Safer Future.

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For more information, contact Annie Pellicciotti in the Department of Epidemiology, 206-616-0382, or apell@uw.edu.