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.

People riding free-floating bike share rentals in Seattle are wearing helmets infrequently, according to a new analysis conducted by 91̽�� researchers.  Only 20 percent of bike share riders wore helmets in the study, while more than 90 percent of cyclists wore helmets while riding their own bikes.

Different research on the free-floating bike share systems showed that bikes were usually available in all Seattle neighborhoods across economic, racial and ethnic lines. However, more bikes were located in more-advantaged neighborhoods.

“There’s nowhere that was systematically ignored during the first six months of the program,” said , an epidemiologist at the and professor at the UW’s . He’s the lead author of both studies.

The helmet study shows that bike share riders may be adopting a casual approach to cycling that doesn’t include helmet usage.

“What we’re concerned about is: What are the implications of casual riders not wearing helmets?” Mooney said. “What’s the risk for them and for other people?”

Researchers counted the number of cyclists – noting helmet use –at four strategic locations around Seattle: the Fremont bridge, the Burke-Gilman Trail, Broadway Bike Lane and NW 58^th Street at 22^nd Avenue NW.  Researchers found that only one in five people riding bike shares wore helmets.

So far, researchers haven’t seen an increase in head injuries among free-floating bike share riders, but they’re watching. It’s important to observe and better understand rider behavior in addition to looking at crash data, Mooney said. The ways people ride free-floating bikes, and where they ride them, and how they fall from them when they crash may lead to a very different risk profile than that of private bike riders. Still, an overwhelming amount of research shows that wearing a helmet helps to prevent serious head injury in a bike crash.

The researchers observed fewer cyclists wearing helmets — both on private bikes and on bike share rentals — in areas where there were lots of bike shares.

The research finding may be an indication that the adoption of free-floating bike shares may support more casual use, different from commuting or training, in which helmet use is less part of the culture.

That’s troubling, but not yet cause to take action, Mooney said.

“There’s a lot of nuance in bike safety – we know that helmets protect heads, but we also know that places where more riders cluster usually have lower risk per rider. Obviously, we’d love to see more riders with helmets. But we recognize that not everyone wants to lug a helmet around just in case they decide to ride casually later in the day. So we’re monitoring both ridership and injuries,” he said.

Other studies have found similarly low statistics of bike helmet use in other bike share systems, with about 15 percent helmet use in New York and about 39 percent in Boston compared with Seattle’s estimated 20 percent use of helmets. However, Vancouver’s system, Mobi, provides helmets and boosts usage there as much as three times Seattle, at 64 percent.

The helmet study, published last month in the , was co-authored by Bella Lee and Allyson O’Connor of the UW. Funding was provided by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development. The data was made publicly available through the at UW, a partnership between the City of Seattle, a team of 91̽��researchers, and data providers including bike share companies.

In a separate study, published recently in the , Mooney again looked at bike share programs. This time the research team wanted to see if the benefits of bike share — such as improved health and reduced travel times — were available to all neighborhoods regardless of economic status, race and ethnicity.

“Free-floating bikes went everywhere. Pretty much everyone has some access,” Mooney said.

Prior studies showed that docked bike share systems, which are geographically constrained by station locations, tended to favor advantaged neighborhoods. There were not stark differences in availability of the free-floating systems, the research found.

Researchers used the aggregate data collected from all the free-floating bike share operators in Seattle and combined that with neighborhood based census data. While the distribution of bike shares was broad, they reported, there was a higher concentration of the rentals in more affluent areas of the city.

“If you look a little bit deeper, there is some inequity in where the bikes go,” Mooney said. “But bikes were usually available throughout the city.”

Co-Principal Investigator on the broader Seattle bike share project is of Drexel University. Other co-authors on this paper include Kate Hosford of Simon Frasier University and the University of British Columbia; Alon Bassok, Bill Howe and An Yan of the UW; and Meghan Winters of Simon Frasier University. Funding was provided by grants from the Better Bike Share Partnership, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Library of Medicine and Drexel University.

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Contact Mooney at sjm2186@uw.edu.