Neighborhood Poverty, Family Economic Well-Being, and Child Maltreatment

Abstract

This study sought to understand the relationships between neighborhood poverty, family monetary well-being, and child maltreatment. The specific research questions were as follows: (1) Is neighborhood poverty at age 1 related to child physical abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect at age 5? (2) Are these relationships mediated by family monetary well-being? The study relied on data from three waves (child ages 1, 3, and 5) of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal birth-cohort study of 4,898 children from 20 large U.S. cities. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine mediational effects. The study found a lasting impact of neighborhood poverty on child neglect only, and this relationship was fully mediated by family monetary well-being. There was not a significant longitudinal relationship between neighborhood poverty and physical abuse or psychological abuse. Implications from the study suggest that neighborhood disadvantage impacts a families’ economic well-being, and that individual-level economic supports may interrupt the pathway from neighborhood poverty to child neglect.

Introduction

Child abuse and neglect are significant problems in the United States, with 1 in 8 children being confirmed victims of maltreatment by the age of 18 (Wildeman et al., 2014). Maltreatment impacts children’s health and development and hinders their ability to succeed in school and form relationships with peers (Ajilian Abbasi et al., 2015). Abuse and neglect also have lasting consequences, with lower levels of socioeconomic status and higher levels of physical and mental health challenges reported among adult survivors of child maltreatment (Widom, 2017; Widom et al., 2012). Parents face a variety of risk and protective factors that affect their ability to care for their children. Neighborhood- and family-level poverty are associated with higher risk for child maltreatment (Coulton et al., 2007; Drake & Jonson-Reid, 2013; Freisthler et al., 2006; Maguire-Jack, 2014). The current study examines the association between neighborhood-level poverty and child physical abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect; and the extent to which these relationships are mediated by individual-level economic well-being.

Background

Neighborhood Poverty and Child Maltreatment

A growing body of literature has focused on understanding the impact of the neighborhood environment on parenting behaviors. Many articles have applied social disorganization theory (Sampson et al., 1997; Shaw & McKay, 1942), a theory originating in the field of criminal justice, to understand the ways in which neighborhoods might impact child maltreatment (Coulton et al., 2007; Freisthler, 2004; Freisthler & Maguire-Jack, 2015; Maguire-Jack et al., 2021). These studies have focused on several structural factors of neighborhoods, including neighborhood poverty, residential instability, childcare burden, and ethnic heterogeneity (Maguire-Jack, 2014). Study findings vary, depending on the measure of child maltreatment and samples investigated, but across studies neighborhood poverty is most commonly found to be associated with maltreatment, above and beyond the impact of individual-level poverty (Maguire-Jack, 2014).

Neighborhood poverty may decrease resources available to residents, including work and opportunities for advancement. Spatial mismatch theory (Kain, 1968) purports that urban neighborhoods with high levels of poverty are isolated from the job growth of suburban areas, causing joblessness among the residents within. Educational opportunities are typically fewer within disadvantaged neighborhoods due to funding being tied to local tax revenues (Katz, 2020). With limited job and education prospects, living in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty may increase the likelihood that individual residents struggle economically. Neighborhood poverty also increases the likelihood that children are exposed to violence within their residential neighborhood (Graif & Matthews, 2017).

Individual Economic Hardship and Maltreatment

Individual poverty has been tied to child maltreatment in a variety of prior studies (Berger & Waldfogel, 2011; Drake & Jonson-Reid, 2013; Sedlak et al., 2010; Slack et al., 2004). For neglect specifically, children in low socioeconomic households are 7 times more likely to experience neglect compared to children in higher socioeconomic households (Sedlak et al., 2010). While most families who experience poverty do not neglect their children, poverty has several influences on parents that hinder their ability to care for their children in optimal ways. Having limited means can inhibit a parent’s ability to provide for a child’s basic needs, such as food, shelter, clothing, health care, education, and supervision. When a parent is struggling to make ends meet, meeting these basic needs can be a difficult task. Further, many factors associated with poverty are also associated with risk of neglect, such as single parenthood, unemployment, and housing instability (Dubowitz et al., 2011; Koball & Jiang, 2018; Slack et al., 2011). State statutes commonly have clauses that stipulate neglect must be based on behaviors for reasons other than poverty alone in order to meet child protective services’ standards. However, in practice, it can be difficult to discern whether the reasons for failing to adequately care for or supervise a child are due to poverty or neglect. Further, in self-reported measures of neglectful behaviors, such a distinction is not made.

Individual economic hardship can also increase the risk for physical and emotional abuse. Indeed, children in low socioeconomic households are 3 times more likely to experience abuse compared to their more affluent peers (Sedlak et al., 2010). Researchers have commonly relied upon the Family Stress Model (FSM) of Economic Hardship (Conger et al., 1994) to understand the ways in which economic hardships can relate to negative child outcomes. The model proposes that economic hardships can disrupt positive family processes, evoking parental depression, stress, and anxiety. Such mental health stressors, in turn, increases the likelihood of fighting and distress between spouses, increased parental hostility, and other negative parenting behaviors (Conger et al., 1994; Mistry et al, 2002; Newland et al., 2013). As a result, children in families experiencing economic shocks are more likely to witness their parents’ emotional distress and to experience harsh and inconsistent discipline practices (Conger et al., 1994). Prior studies have found economic hardships to be related to increased risk for harsh parenting and maltreatment (Neppl et al., 2016; Yang, 2014).

Experiences of Neighborhood and Individual Economic Hardship

The research on neighborhoods and child maltreatment have focused to a great extent on understanding the impact of neighborhood influences above and beyond the impact of similar constructs at the individual level (Maguire-Jack, 2014). Fewer studies have examined specifically the interplay between these levels of the social-ecological systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1992) to fully understand the ways in which parents are impacted by their environment. One study sought to understand the interactions between neighborhood poverty and individual-level poverty status using a sample of families from one urban county in Ohio (Maguire-Jack & Font, 2017). The authors specifically examined families who were considered poor and living in a poor neighborhood, families who were non-poor and living in a poor neighborhood, families who were poor and living in a non-poor neighborhood, and families who were non-poor and living in a non-poor neighborhood to understand the cumulative impacts of poverty and potential protective impacts of living in a non-poor neighborhood (Maguire-Jack & Font, 2017). The study found that both individual poverty status and neighborhood poverty increased the likelihood of child maltreatment, that there was not a compounding impact of individual and neighborhood poverty, and that there was no protective effects of being poor in a non-poor neighborhood (Maguire-Jack & Font, 2017). While this previous study considered individual and neighborhood status to be exogenous, the current study is specifically focused on understanding the ways in which they are related, that is, to what extent does neighborhood poverty increase the risk of individual poverty status; and how are both of these related to maltreatment?

A Longitudinal Application of the FSM

The FSM has been widely used to illustrate how economic pressure influences parent and child outcomes (Conger et al., 2010). The majority of prior research implementing the FSM has used a cross-sectional approach (Conger et al., 2010); however, more studies are drawing on longitudinal designs (Masarik & Conger, 2017). A recent study using a longitudinal application of the FSM investigating whether economic pressure at Year 1 was associated with child internalizing and externalizing behaviors at Year 9 yielded mixed support. Results demonstrated that greater economic pressure at Year 1 was related to more maternal distress at age 3, which in turn was related to lower maternal warmth and more harshness at age 5 and both were related to children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors at age 9 (Gard et al., 2020). However, when adding lagged constructs to the model, only changes in maternal warmth and harshness were related to changes in externalizing behaviors (Gard et al., 2020). To our knowledge, there has yet to be a study investigating whether neighborhood poverty is associated with childhood maltreatment using a longitudinal application of the FSM.

Current Study

Previous research has provided evidence linking neighborhood poverty to child maltreatment and individual poverty to child maltreatment, but there has yet to be a systematic investigation on whether neighborhood poverty is linked with child maltreatment via individual poverty. The current study builds on prior work from Maguire-Jack and Font (2017), which examined combinations of neighborhood and individual monetary well-being status in relation to child maltreatment. The current study improves on this previous work in two important ways, first, by using a large, nationally representative sample of families; and second, by examining individual poverty status as endogenous to neighborhood poverty. Specifically, we ask the following research question: Is neighborhood poverty related to child maltreatment, and is it mediated by individual-level poverty?

Method

Data and Sample

The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (Fragile Families) is a longitudinal sample of nearly 5,000 children from 20 large cities across the United States born between 1998 and 2000. Fragile Families oversampled for children born to unmarried parents which resulted in about two-thirds of children born to cohabiting parents. The sample was racially diverse (69% Black, 19% Hispanic, 8% White, and 4% other race based on mother’s race) and tended to be lower income (Reichman et al., 2001). At baseline, mothers were between 18 and 40 years old, were likely born in the U.S. (87% of sample), and 41% had less than a high school diploma (Reichman et al., 2001). Data were collected at birth and at years 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 and used survey and observation data from mothers, fathers, primary caregivers, child care providers, teachers, and children. For the current study, the sample was limited to families that participated in the 5-year in-home assessments because this is when maltreatment was measured (n = 3,001).

The sample for these analyses were racially/ethnically diverse (48% Black, 17% White, 21% Hispanic, and 14% other race/ethnicity) and were 52% male children (see Table 1). Mothers were 26.33 years old on average and 71% had a high school degree or higher. About 25% of mothers were married and 19% of mothers displayed a probable case of depression and 5% displayed a probable case of anxiety. For the sample, approximately 43% of the sample lived below the federal poverty line (FPL), whereas only 32% lived at 200% or above the FPL. Almost a fifth of the sample lived in neighborhoods with 20% or more poverty (average neighborhood poverty level was .18 with a standard deviation of .14).

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics of Fragile Families Participants Included in the Analyses (n = 3,001 ).

	Mean or %	SD	Range
Physical abuse	12.50	16.21	0–100
Psychological abuse	25.80	21.01	0–125
Neglect	0.54	2.69	0–40
Neighborhood 20% or more poverty	0.19
Monetary well-being	16.50	2.18	3–21.49
Child male	0.52
Mother’s age (at year 1)	26.33	6.01	15–48
Married	0.25
Not married	0.75
Maternal education High School diploma or higher	0.70
Maternal education less than High School diploma	0.30
Maternal depressive symptoms	0.19
Maternal anxiety symptoms	0.05
White	0.17
Black	0.48
Hispanic	0.21
Other race	0.14

Measures

Neighborhood Poverty.

The key independent variable examined was neighborhood poverty at child age 1. Available through contract from the restricted use data, neighborhood poverty was available from the U.S. Census Bureau and was continuously measured against the percentage of families within the census tract of the primary caregiver who had incomes below the federal poverty level.

Monetary Well-Being.

At Year 3, mothers reported on their monetary well-being, which was based on their employment status, income, and material hardship. Maternal employment was based on whether mothers reported working in the last week for pay (0 = no; 1 = yes). Income was based on the constructed mother household income (mean = 35,623.51, SD = 44,041.26) and transformed using the natural log. Material hardship was based on whether mothers reported engaging in eight behaviors in the past month due to not having enough money (e.g., “Did you not pay the full amount of rent or mortgage payments?”). Affirmative responses received a score of one and these 8 items were summed and then reverse coded so reflect economic well-being. Mothers that were missing more than 1 item were recoded to zero. These three constructs (i.e., employment, income, and economic well-being) were then summed to create a composite measure of monetary well-being with higher scores reflecting higher levels of monetary well-being.

Maltreatment.

At Years 3 and 5, maltreatment was measured using the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS; Straus et al., 1998) and was based on mother report of how often she engaged in different behaviors in the past year. Physical abuse included shaking the child, hitting the child on the bottom with an object, spanking the child with her hand, slapping the child, or pinching the child. The α at age 3 and age 5 was .61. Psychological abuse included shouting, yelling, or screaming at the child, swearing or cursing at the child, saying that she would send the child away or kick them out of the house, threatening to spank or hit the child, and calling the child a name. The α at age 3 was .52 and at age 5 was .56. Neglect included leaving the child home alone, not telling or showing the child she loved them, not making sure the child got necessary food, not making sure the child received necessary medical care, and being so drunk or high she couldn’t care for the child. The αs were .26 and .25, respectively. For each type of maltreatment, each indicator was dichotomized and summed. If mothers had more than two missing items then the scale was recoded to missing. Higher scores indicated higher maltreatment.

Covariates.

All covariates were drawn from Year 1. Child-level covariates include sex (0 = female, 1 = male). Family-level covariates include mother’s age, race (White, Black, Other race), marital status (not married or married), mother’s education level (less than high school degree or high school degree/more), maternal depressive symptoms (0 = not probable case, 1 = probable case), and maternal anxiety symptoms (0 = not probable case, 1 = probable case).

Analytic Approach

All analyses were modeled using an SEM framework in Mplus 8.5 (Muthén, & Muthén, 2020) and full information maximum likelihood estimation was used to account for missing data. Given some outcomes were violated assumptions of normality, the maximum likelihood with robust standard errors estimator was used for all models. Model fit indices included χ² test of model fit, comparative fit index (CFI), root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), and standardized root mean residual (SRMR < .08). Good model fit would be indicated by an insignificant χ², CFI > .95, RMSEA < .05, and SRMR < .08.

The current study used mediation to estimate whether neighborhood poverty was associated with later maltreatment and if this relationship was partially explained by monetary well-being. The mediation model used path analysis in a SEM framework to be able to estimate both direct and indirect effects (Kline, 2015). Physical abuse, psychological abuse, and neglect at Year 5 were simultaneously regressed on monetary well-being at Year 3 and neighborhood poverty at Year 1. The indirect effects were estimated using the Mplus model indirect estimation. These analyses also controlled for prior levels of maltreatment at Year 3 and covariates.

We also ran a series of post hoc sensitivity analyses to assess the extent to which our models were sensitive to certain assumptions made. First, we reran our models using bootstrapping with 5,000 draws. Second, we regressed maltreatment at age 5 on monetary well-being at age 5. Third, we ran a model of second-order mediation and monetary well-being at age 5. Finally, we ran a model replacing monetary well-being at age 3 with monetary well-being at age 5.

Results

First, the model fit the data well, χ²(14) = 84.02, p = .00, CFI = .97, RMSEA = .04 [CI: .03, .05], SRMR = .02. Neighborhood poverty at Year 1 had direct effects on monetary well-being at Year 3 after controlling for covariates (β = −.13, p < .001; see Figure 1 and Table 2). Specifically, higher levels of neighborhood poverty were related to lower levels of monetary well-being. Next, monetary well-being at Year 3 had direct effects on only neglect (β = −.04, p < .05) at Year 5 after controlling for prior levels of neglect (β = .08, p < .001) and covariates, with higher levels of monetary well-being associated with lower levels of neglect. Monetary well-being was not significantly associated with psychological or physical abuse when controlling for prior levels of abuse. Prior levels of psychological abuse at Year 3 were associated with higher levels of psychological abuse at Year 5 (β = .45, p < .001) and prior levels of physical abuse were related to higher levels of physical abuse at Year 5 (β = .44, p < .001). The r² values were .20 for monetary well-being, .24 for physical abuse, .24 for psychological abuse, and .02 for neglect. In addition to significant direct pathways, we also found significant indirect pathways or mediation (see Table 3). Our results indicate that monetary wellbeing at Year 3 fully mediated the pathway between neighborhood poverty at Year 1 and neglect at Year 5.

Figure 1.

Conceptual model linking neighborhood poverty to monetary well-being, physical assault, psychological aggression, and neglect. Note. ***p < .001, *p < .05. Model does not display correlations between outcome measures. Model controlled for prior levels of maltreatment. Gray lines reflect insignificant associations.

Table 2.

Standardized and Unstandardized β From Linear Regressions Between Neighborhood Poverty, Monetary Well-Being, Neglect, Psychological Abuse, and Physical Abuse.

	Monetary Well-Being (Year 3)			Neglect (Year 5)			Psychological Abuse (Year 5)			Physical Abuse (Year 5)
	B	SE	β	B	SE	β	B	SE	β	B	SE	β
Neighborhood poverty (year 1)	−1.92	0.31	−.13***	0.65	0.53	.04*	−4.54	2.74	−.03	0.77	2.30	.01
Child race
Black	−0.02	0.12	−.01	0.06	0.13	.01	0.38	1.09	.01	1.81	0.87	.06*
Hispanic	0.04	0.14	0.01	0.14	0.16	.02	−1.93	1.21	−.04	−1.30	0.88	−.04
White	0.37	0.13	.06**	−0.02	0.15	−.00	−0.81	1.21	−.01	−0.80	0.89	−.02
Child male	−0.04	0.07	−.01	−0.02	0.10	−.01	1.62	0.69	.04*	1.32	0.52	.04*
Mother’s age (year 1)	0.02	0.01	.07***	0.03	0.01	.06**	−0.20	0.07	−.06**	−0.16	0.05	−.06***
Mother education (year 1)	0.95	0.09	.20***	−0.17	0.12	−.03	0.89	0.86	.02	0.89	0.64	.03
Mother married (year 1)	0.91	0.10	.18***	−0.14	0.12	−.02	−1.54	0.90	−.03	−0.15	0.70	−.00
Mother’s depressive symptoms	−0.59	0.11	−.11***	0.13	0.13	.02	1.51	0.97	.03	−0.41	0.74	−.01
Mother’s anxiety symptoms	−0.64	0.21	−.06**	0.29	0.32	.02	−0.82	1.81	−.01	0.32	1.34	.00
Monetary well-being (year 3)				−0.05	0.02	−.04*	−0.29	0.19	−.03	−0.13	0.16	−.02
Neglect (year 3)				0.07	0.02	.08***
Psychological abuse (year 3)							0.47	0.02	.45***
Physical abuse (Year 3)										0.38	0.02	.44***

^*p < .05

^**p < .01

^***p < .001.

Table 3.

Tests of Mediation for Path Analysis Models From Neighborhood Poverty to Maltreatment Types.

	Total Effect				Direct Effect				Indirect Effect
Path	B	SE	β	95% CI	B	SE	β	95% CI	B	SE	β	95% CI
Neighborhood poverty → neglect	0.74	0.53	.04	[−0.29, 1.31]	0.65	0.53	.04	[−0.39,1.69]	0.09	0.04	.01*	[0.01,0.17]
Neighborhood poverty → psychological abuse	−3.99	2.70	−.03	[−9.28,1.31]	−4.54	2.74	−.03	[−9.91,0.83]	0.56	0.38	.004	[−0.19,1.30]
Neighborhood poverty → physical abuse	1.02	2.28	.01	[−3.45,5.49]	0.77	2.30	.01	[−3.74,5.28]	0.25	0.31	.002	[−0.36,0.86]

Note. 95% CI = 95% confidence interval for the unstandardized coefficient.

^*p < .05

The results of our sensitivity analyses did not change the main findings of this article and are available in supplementary material.

Discussion

Few studies have examined the longitudinal relationship between neighborhood factors and child maltreatment, but among those that have, they have focused on macro-level rates of child maltreatment (Frioux et al., 2014; Gracia et al., 2017). This inhibits the ability to examine the impact on individual parents. Other studies have focused on parents already involved in the child welfare system (Kim et al., 2020), thereby examining maltreatment recurrence rather than initial onset. The current study focused on individual parents and attempted to understand the pathways through which disadvantaged neighborhoods longitudinally impact child maltreatment behaviors. Given the link between living in an impoverished neighborhood and reduced access to economic and employment opportunities, the current study sought to understand whether neighborhood poverty at age 1 was related to child maltreatment at age 5 and, if so, whether the relationships were mediated by family monetary well-being at age 3. The study found a lasting impact of neighborhood poverty at age 1 on child neglect at age 5 (fully mediated by individual monetary well-being) but did not find a lasting impact on physical or psychological abuse. The findings should be interpreted with caution, as the measure of maltreatment used within this study has low internal reliability, as measured by Cronbach’s α.

The relationship between neighborhood poverty and child neglect is perhaps unsurprising. Neglect and poverty are often difficult to disentangle in practice, despite many state statutes specifying that behaviors are considered neglect by the child welfare system must be for other than for reasons of poverty alone. Further, the current study did not rely on administrative measures of child neglect, but rather, parental self-report, which may be difficult to distinguish from poverty alone. What may be surprising, is the lasting relationship detected in the current study. Specifically, neighborhood poverty at child age 1 was related to higher levels of self-reported neglect at age 5 through monetary well-being at age 3. Understanding the drivers of this longitudinal relationship is critical for highlighting intervention targets.

The lack of significant findings related to physical and psychological abuse was surprising in the current study. The predominant neighborhood theory within the child maltreatment literature is social disorganization theory (Shaw & McKay, 1942), which is a cross sectional model. It is possible that the relationship between neighborhood poverty and child abuse is significant within-time but not over time. Future research should investigate this further.

The finding that individual monetary well-being fully mediated the relationship between neighborhood poverty and child neglect provides support for components of spatial mismatch theory (Kain, 1968), which, in part, suggests that impoverished urban areas are isolated from economic and employment opportunities. This suggests that parents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods are more likely to experience individual economic hardships, and that the likelihood of experiencing these hardships is increased due to their residence in the impoverished neighborhood. This may be due to fewer job and education prospects (Katz, 2020). This mediated relationship also coincides with prior research documenting a significant relationship between individual economic hardship and child neglect (Slack et al., 2004), and prior research finding a link between neighborhood poverty and child neglect (Maguire-Jack, 2014). The findings suggest that provision of concentrated economic supports to parents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods may reduce neglectful behaviors.

Further, this was one of the first studies to implement a longitudinal application of the FSM in which the primary indicator for economic pressure was at the neighborhood level. Prior research has illustrated links between neighborhood poverty and child maltreatment, but many of these investigations have used a cross-sectional approach (Maguire-Jack, 2014). Given our results of the lasting impact of neighborhood poverty at age 1 on neglect at age 5 through monetary well-being, this illustrates that intervention must happen early in development. Indeed, prior work has supported the claim that early intervention has the most influential impact (Heckman, 2008). In addition, our work illustrates the importance of investing in neighborhoods as a mechanism for preventing future neglect.

In addition to the impact of neighborhood poverty on individual monetary well-being, several malleable covariates were also influential. Mothers with at least a high school education and mothers who were married had higher levels of monetary well-being, while maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were related to lower levels. These findings suggest that interventions to improve education and mental health of mothers may increase monetary well-being, which may then have a preventive impact against child neglect. The study also found significant pathways between maltreatment at age 3 and maltreatment at age 5. The magnitude of the effects of maltreatment at one time point on the next was much larger than any other predictor within the model. This finding suggests a significant need for indicated prevention efforts, that is, prevention strategies targeted at families in which maltreatment has already occurred to prevent recurrence.

Limitations

There are several limitations that must be considered when interpreting the findings from this study. First, by design, Fragile Families oversampled unmarried parents from hospitals in large, urban cities in the United States. As a result, the sample includes a large sample of racially diverse and lower income mothers. Additionally, while the study is nationally representative of urban areas, it is unclear the extent to which study findings would translate to the rural context. Future research should examine the extent to which these relationships hold true in nonurban settings in the United States. Given significant geographic disparities in availability of employment, housing, and social services; the relationships between neighborhood poverty and child maltreatment in rural areas may be even stronger. Second, the measure of neighborhood poverty was taken from the Census, and the measure of “neighborhood” for this purpose is a census tract. Census tracts are commonly used in research to proxy the geographical space of a neighborhood, but rarely map on to residents’ own perceptions of a neighborhood (Coulton et al., 2001). Future research should consider including multiple indicators of neighborhood poverty in order to compare their influences on parental maltreatment. Third, the study measures of child maltreatment and family monetary well-being come from parent self-report. Both of these constructs are sensitive topics that are likely affected by social desirability bias. That is, parents may underreport their maltreatment behaviors and experiences of economic hardship because of shame, stigma, or embarrassment. Given the likely underestimate for the prevalence of abuse and neglect, this would skew our results toward null findings. Within the sample, neglect, in particular, had a very low base rate, with the average level of neglect being less than one neglectful act per year. Future research should include multiple sources of maltreatment, such as from child welfare records and multiple informants. A better measure of neglect in particular is needed, as the CTS-PC utilizes five questions that measure very different behaviors including neglect related to poverty (e.g. unable to provide food), neglect related to supervision (e.g. having to leave a child alone when you felt that an adult should be with them), and neglect related to substance use (e.g. being too drunk or high to care for the child). Future research should seek to replicate these findings using a different measure of neglect.

Implications

Among child victims in the child welfare system, child neglect remains the largest category of maltreatment experienced (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 2020), and making a significant impact on maltreatment requires paying specific attention to child neglect (Bullinger et al., 2020). Despite its importance, neglect remains understudied relative to other forms of maltreatment (Proctor & Dubowitz, 2014). The study suggests that one of the ways in which neighborhood poverty impacts child neglect is through the ways in which it inhibits parental access to income and resources. Investing in neighborhoods to ensure economic and employment opportunity for the residents within is critical for preventing child neglect. Additionally, for parents who are residing in a low-income neighborhood, providing individual-level economic supports to reduce the material hardships that they experience is likely to interrupt the chain from neighborhood poverty to child neglect. Therefore, this population should be targeted for additional economic supports.

Biographies

Author Biographies

Kathryn Maguire-Jack’s research focuses on child abuse and neglect prevention, with an emphasis on communities and geographic disparities. Her work is funded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, the Ohio Children’s Trust Fund, and Triple P America. She has expertise in advanced statistical methods and program evaluation.

Kierra Sattler’s research uses an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the risk and resilience processes that contribute to children’s academic, social-emotional, and physical health outcomes. Specifically, her research focuses on childhood exposures to poverty or maltreatment as sources of risk, with the aim of advancing scientific knowledge and informing interventions that promote the well-being of children from high-risk families. She incorporates advanced quantitative and longitudinal methods (e.g., structural equation modeling, multi-level survival analysis, and autoregressive regression models) to understand the processes of risk and resilience across early childhood. She uses both large-scale secondary data (e.g., Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being) and administrative data (e.g., Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Wisconsin Administrative Data Core).