Can Paid Family Leave Prevent Abuse?

Teresa Huizar:

Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, “Can Paid Family Leave Prevent Abuse?” I speak with Dr. Lindsey Bullinger, Associate Professor at Georgia Tech, and Associate Director of the Health Economics and Policy Innovation Collaborative. So, what does Paid Family Leave have to do with decreasing child maltreatment? Well, as it turns out, more than you might think, and especially for infants.

Over the years, policy discussions about paid family leave have often revolved around general health and mental health benefits for mom and increasing the opportunity for healthy attachments for babies. And the data supports these arguments and others about the importance of family formation. But what if paid family leave also had an important knock-on effect for the most vulnerable infants of all? Those at risk for neglect or physical abuse?

What if along the way, governments could save a great deal of money while also preventing a great deal of suffering? If you’re intrigued to learn more, please take a listen.

 

Lindsey, welcome to One in Ten.

 

Lindsey Bullinger:

Thanks so much for having me.

 

TH:

How did you come to this work looking at the impact of paid family leave on child maltreatment? We were very intrigued when we read the paper.

 

LB:

So glad to hear that. Yeah, this paper was sort of a long time coming. So many years ago, I wrote a paper during graduate school actually, looking at the effects of paid family leave on mothers, and in particular in their mental health. And what I found in that paper was improvements in maternal mental health. And as someone who is a child and family policy scholar and interested in the ways in which parents and their health can impact children and their health and their behaviors. And with the team that’s on this paper, Carrie, Bart, Melissa, and Eric, we wanted to make this connection, if there was one, between paid family leave and child maltreatment. And this fits in with some of the other work that this team has been doing, both together and independently, on income support policies and whether income support policies can influence child maltreatment.

And so sort of these two worlds collided and we looked at the effects of paid family leave policies on child maltreatment. And of course we found some effects which we’ll I’m sure get to. But that’s how it sort of started with two separate research agendas sort of combining.

 

TH:

So just for our audience who have not probably yet read your paper, we should probably point out that it really is looking specifically at the period of infancy. So why that particular period? For folks who might not know, why were you most interested in that?

 

LB:

Yeah, so paid family leave provides paid time off for parents to either bond with a newborn or to spend time caring for a sick child. Or sometimes these programs also extend to elder care and other sort of family care. So the programs that we were specifically focused on were thinking more about this bonding care. So there’s quite a bit of variation in the United States across these policies, but most of them, for example, provide up to six to twelve weeks of paid time off from work to spend bonding with the newborn. And the idea here, this like theory of change, is that if parents can spend those early weeks instead of stressing about returning to work, if they can spend those weeks bonding with their child, getting to know this new person, ad adapting to a new a potentially a new life and a new lifestyle with having a child is one of the biggest life changes there possibly could be. If they could get a little bit of time just to adjust to this new transition and get to know this child, and also have a little bit of income support in doing so and not have to stress quite as much on the employment side of things, then maybe they are parenting differently. And so we were really focused on this very early period.

Most data sets that are available to researchers do not allow you to look at, you know, six- to twelve-week-olds. And it’s also quite possible, given empirical evidence, that effects that might exist early on could also show up in maltreatment within the first year. They could actually extend even beyond the first year, but we really wanted to focus on that first year of life because that’s when the policy is affecting parents’ behaviors the most.

 

TH:

Okay. So really looking at infancy, there’s a piece of it that you’re looking at because obviously paid family leave applies to, as you’re saying, this subset of time in which folks are bonding with newborns. But the other thing from the child maltreatment side is that infants are particularly vulnerable. And we see increased rates of some forms of child maltreatment in infancy and specific vulnerabilities. Can you talk a little bit about the literature as it relates to the vulnerability of children during that time?

 

LB:

That’s right. Yes. Thank you for raising that point. So infants have the highest rate of maltreatment of any age of child. And this is particularly important during this life transition. Infants are 100% dependent upon an adult to care for them. Things like, you know, changing a diaper or things like nutrition. It’s a bit more of an intensive parenting time than any other age of childhood.

And so paid leave is supposed to sort of assist with this time period and this transition. In addition, there’s the income support, which both of these, more time, more money, both of these have been shown to help maltreatment prevention. And then you’ve got this third dimension, which you’ve just noted, which is that infants have a much higher rate of maltreatment than other age groups. It’s also been theorized, though the evidence is a little weaker particularly in regard to paid family leave, but many of these children are also reported for maltreatment due to substance exposure. And so there is some research showing that paid family leave can reduce substance use among parents in the early years of an infant’s life. And so there’s also, you know, potentially that dimension as well.

 

TH:

Well, let’s unpack paid family leap a little bit because it varies in terms of the access people have to it. You know, I was reminded when I was reading the paper of just how variable it is, even when it’s state sponsored, et cetera. It’s not as though every state has the same package for every employer. You might be doing an employer sponsored, paid family leave has the same benefit. And so can you talk a little bit about that? In the US, what does it look like?

What percentage of employees have access to this in some form? What number of states, you know, are offering this? Do you see this as something that’s static and kind of stable? Or are you seeing a growing interest in it or a waning interest in it? Just sort of what’s the state of play with for paid family leave?

 

LB:

Yeah, it’s not very common. So in the United States, we have no federal paid family leave program. We do have a federal unpaid leave program, FMLA, and that offers twelve weeks of unpaid leave as a result of there being no federal paid family leave program. Several states have adopted their own and they fund it on their own and they distribute benefits on their own. And by now I think there are thirteen states that have some legislation on paid family leave programming. This is a very hot topic in every legislature, every year of legislatures across the country. Not all states are interested in paid family leave programs, but many of them are. And it’s just a matter of pinning down what the details look like. So in this particular study, we were really focused on the first few of the paid family leave programs. So the very first one was California, which enacted their program in 2004.

It took a few years for the second one to come along, which was New Jersey in 2009. And since then, a few other states have adopted, and there’s been this sort of rush in the last few years. Several states have enacted policies in the last few years. As you noted, there is quite a bit of variation across these programs, though the more recent programs look a bit more similar. But just to give you a sense, for example, one state has six weeks of paid family leave. Most of them have up to 12 weeks of paid family leave. Their benefit amounts vary based on different wage amounts, wage replacement amounts. employment requirements also vary across states. So who’s eligible, then how many hours worked in the previous year? So there’s quite a bit of variation. I don’t have the statistic off the top of my head in terms of what percentage of, for example, new mothers are eligible for any one of these state programs. But if you take out the state programs, very few workers are covered by employer sponsored paid family leave programs. And those that tend to be a bit higher income in the income distribution. They tend to be a bit more higher income employees.

 

TH:

It’s interesting because thank you for that. You know, I remember when DC, which is where we’re headquartered, put in paid family leave. And I can’t say it was a terribly generous policy when you look at the income support replacement percentage. I don’t remember what it is. Our own private employer sponsored was actually much better. And so we made people whole between the two. But it was an interesting conversion into that system. And I think that there would be a greater groundswell of interest on the part of employees of some of the wage support piece of that were larger. I think maybe it was 60% close to like what short-term disability does. And so it was one of those where it was like, it’s better than nothing, but it wasn’t terrific. And so we felt like we had to do better than that. But to your point, and this did shock me, the number you quoted in the paper itself was at 18% of private sector employees have access to employer sponsored paid family leave, which I found very surprising and very low.

 

LB:

Yes. Yes.

 

TH:

Why do you think that is? Because to me, this seems like something, you know. I can okay, let me back up here. Let me just say that I remember when we were making the decision to add it as a benefit. And there’s no doubt that small employers and the vast majority of US companies or small businesses, not giant Fortune 500 companies. So it did take some real thinking about, how you’re going to backfill that work while someone is out for a prolonged period of time. And I think that we can’t underestimate that or downplay that or act like it doesn’t exist. That work isn’t going to be done by someone, including other employees who were there right then. But I also think that it’s also not insurmountable. You know, lots of folks have figured this out, and so did we. And so we were much smaller even than we are now. We’re 50 employees now, so not very big, but at the time we instituted paid family leave. We were, I don’t know, 25, 30. I mean, we were much smaller than we are now. There probably is some number below which it would be very, very difficult to do. But it’s one of those things where I just wonder what you see when you’re talking to whether it’s policymakers or others, what are you seeing as the most frequent barrier to this? Because certainly employees have a desire for it and if some.

 

LB:

Yeah, so I would say that if a firm doesn’t have it, then the firm itself is viewing it as not being worth its expense, right? And so maybe people are already taking unpaid leave and they’re okay with that. And so why would they then need to subsidize the time that they’re already taking off? as a firm, that is one perspective. There is some evidence now that in terms of labor market outcomes.

These policies do keep particularly low-income women more attached though to the labor market than if these policies were not in existence. So one other theory is, you know, these firms may prefer to just rehire somebody different and let this person go. And so it’s also quite dependent upon different employees are across the income distribution. So we know that higher income employees will subsidize it themselves and take unpaid time off. Lower income employees might just change jobs at this transition. And so every firm, if they’re not offering it, they’re viewing it as not being worth the expense for them. And I think what some of the research it’s still pretty new, but some of the research is showing that maybe that’s not a great way to be thinking about it because we are seeing this labor market attachment, but that might not, you know, from a macro perspective, from a policy perspective, that’s good news, right? But from a firm, one single firm’s perspective, what they could have done is just hire somebody different and let this person go. Or they could offer other benefits or count on the government to fund the program. So I think in some ways, this paper wasn’t as much about paid leave is paid family leave is this great fix for everything. That’s not what we’re saying. That’s not our stance. Our question here is really, does it affect infant maltreatment? And it does. And so our argument here is that there are a lot of costs and a lot of benefits to state governments for having a paid family leave program. They are expensive. And if you were to do the cost benefit analysis of a single policy like this or a single program, our paper is now saying, look, there’s this other benefit that’s very, very costly that hasn’t even been considered really. Usually, this is not something that’s come up in the policy dialogue regarding the benefits of a paid family leave program. And so our research is highlighting, you know what? That when you think about the cost-benefit equation, the benefits are now a little higher. In fact, a lot higher because child maltreatment is a very expensive social problem. This is more a question about, you know, state policies and state governments. There are limited resources and how do you want to be good stewards of public dollars. And so you can’t spend money on everything. And so this is just adding to the evidence about some of the benefits of a state sponsored program.

 

TH:

Going to say, I think that the argument you’re making, and I’m not going to agree that I think the primary reasons that some firms don’t offer paid family leave, I’m not gonna make the assumption, it’s because they don’t think that it’s a good idea or they don’t think it’s good. Like until I see the literature that says that that’s about their perceptions, I’m not gonna go there. But it can just be laziness. I mean, you know, the principle of parsimony could be just inertia or whatever it is, but for whatever reason, arguments about child maltreatment are not likely to be the lever that’s going to make a private employer make a shift about this. But I think you’re on to something on the point that on the other hand, for state sponsored programs, gosh, states spend a lot of money on child welfare.

And they spend a ton of money on foster care and they spend a ton of money on therapy for kids who’ve been abused and they spend a ton of money on substance abuse treatment for parents that wind up in the system and lots of other interventions. And so if we could reduce that in some way or offset the cost in some way, that could be very attractive in a state that might not otherwise see it as particularly attractive or at the top of their policy agenda. So turning back to the paper for just a minute, let’s just kind of talk a little bit about the literature around the benefits of paid family leave in and of itself. You’ve talked about the benefits to maternal mental health and health. What about on the child side? On the infant side, what are the benefits, irrespective of child maltreatment, just in general, to infants mental and physical health for paid family leave?

 

LB:

Yeah, there’s not nearly as much on infants, but there is some. So we know that we’ve seen improvements from paid family leave programs on infant health, and this would be as measured by a parent self report. We’ve seen improvements in infant mortality, we’ve seen improvements in vaccination rates among infants, we’ve seen improvement in time spent with children, that parents are reporting, they’re spending more time, more high-quality time with their children, reading to their children, those sorts of things. And so these all have potentially large benefits when we think about sort of the infancy period as being very dynamic, right? Like these investments early in a child’s life, significantly larger benefits over the course of that child’s life. So the earlier that you can invest in a child and their health and their development, the better off they are in the long term as adults. And so it’s also quite possible that we will never fully capture the benefit of a program like this because it’s just too difficult to measure in the long run. But these are some very helpful and very important findings in the infancy level. We’ve also seen among school-aged children who were affected by paid family leave programs as infants, we’ve seen improvements in things like hearing problems, ADHD, overweight, and a few other sort of health outcomes among those school aged children who were infants at the time that they benefited from the programs.

 

TH:

So we’ve talked a lot about the benefits for a moment more generally, but now let’s turn to the findings of your paper because I thought it was interesting what you both hypothesized and what you found. So talk a little bit about what you were interested in learning through the study specifically and then what you found.

 

LB:

Yeah, so we were interested to see, you know, does a paid family leave program affect child maltreatment reporting rates? And this is a tricky question because on one hand, paid family leave programs, they provide time for parents to remain at home instead of returning to work. They subsidize that time in the form of income supports. And so one thing that may be happening is exposure to mandated reporters, for example, may go down if they’re in the home and not seeing mandated reporters, people like daycare staff. But at the same time, if they’re more likely to get their immunizations or they’re more likely to seek health care, maybe they’re more likely to be in touch with medical staff who are also mandated reporters. And so we think that reports are an imperfect way to measure child maltreatment, but they’re one of the better ways that we have and especially when you think about a nationwide study like this one.

And so on one hand, we thought, you know, maybe there will be this reporting mechanism where we actually see an increase in maltreatment reports because maybe they’re seeing more medical staff and those staff are than they otherwise would have without a paid family leave program and those medical staff are reporting them at higher rates. On the other hand, maybe there is a reporting decrease because they’re not seeing their daycare staff. And then also what does this tell us about what’s actually happening with child maltreatment and overall, not just, you know, specific subsets of different maltreatment reporting type. So the question is, you know, what happens with child maltreatment reports, which we think is a very good proxy for child maltreatment rates. and so again, we were focused specifically on infants. And so what we did was we collected this data nationwide for all 50 states. I think we ended up having to drop two due to incompleteness of data. So from 2004-2020 I think we dropped COVID. There was a large documented reduction in maltreatment reports that we did not want to be conflating as a result of the COVID pandemic with paid family leave program adoption.

 

TH:

Okay, so let’s talk about you really examined the question both of whether this had an impact on reporting rates, and you also looked at the question of whether it had any impact on substantiation rates. Can you talk about those two things for a minute?

 

LB:

Yeah. So we found a reduction in maltreatment report rates for overall, for all types of maltreatment. So that would be neglect. The way that we measured this was neglect, physical abuse, and then all the other types of maltreatment, which would be sexual abuse, emotional abuse. And then we also had a category for home removals. And so we saw a reduction in overall report rates for infants that were would have been affected by these policies.

We also looked at substantiation and we saw reductions in substantiated report rates as well. So these things both tell us that you know, again, they’re imperfect measures. Substantiated maltreatment reports are those that have been investigated and have an investigator has deemed there to be enough evidence of legal maltreatment. I want to caution against thinking about substantiated referrals as being those that are sort of true maltreatment.

And unsubstantiated referrals as being not real maltreatment. That’s not empirically. What we know is that the risk profiles for substantiated cases and unsubstantiated cases are actually quite similar. So what we think is there’s different kinds of measures. But either way, we saw reductions in both. And so what we then can conclude from that particular analysis is that okay, paid family leave has real benefits in the form of lower reports for these infants. And then we headed into okay, where are these reductions coming from? Who is reporting less? Which reporter type is reporting less? And in that regard, we also we actually found pretty much across the board, all reporter types are reporting less. Though perhaps interestingly, we saw the largest relative reductions in social services and medical providers. So and certainly we saw less reports for daycare, but there’s actually, we were much less precise in that measurement. So we can’t conclude quite as strongly. But what that tells us is that this is actually counter to what we thought we would find, which is we thought we would maybe see some more reports among medical providers, but we actually saw less.

 

TH:

What conclusion do you draw from that?

 

LB:

So what this tells us is that either families are completely secluded and they’re not going out.

 

TH:

But seems unlikely, right?

 

LB:

Which is very unlikely. Or that yeah, it’s true. Paid family leave can in fact improve parenting behaviors, reduce stressors among families, among parents.

 

TH:

These economic stressors that they’re experiencing.

 

LB:

Stressors possibly reduce relationship stressors. It’s a particularly precarious time for couples. Sometimes this is the best time ever, and sometimes this is the worst time ever. It’s a very stressful time nonetheless. And so we couldn’t exactly get at the mechanisms. Other papers have done a little bit more on that than what we did, but what we can definitively conclude is that these programs do have substantial benefits in the form of fewer both overall reports of child maltreatment and fewer substantiations of child abuse and neglect. And I also just want to point out that we did find reductions in removals as well. So removals from the home, we saw pretty substantial reductions in the likelihood that a child is removed from their home in the first year of life. And that is a huge finding. It’s very expensive to remove a child from the home. It’s very traumatic. It’s generally something we’d like to avoid as a society.

And so if we can do that, unless absolutely necessary, if we can improve that rate just by having these paid family leave programs, which were really targeted to other social problems and not specifically to child maltreatment, if we get this benefit from the from these policies, then that’s a huge win.

 

TH:

I found it both the most surprising and best economic argument for the policy, honestly, was the piece around removals because it wasn’t a decrease by a tiny percentage. It was a decrease of forty six percent, comparing those states that had implemented, you know, paid family belief and those who hadn’t during that period of time. And I think to your point, foster care is incredibly expensive, as is the court process to actually go through repeatedly and try to remediate things with families, just the removal and also the replacement back into the home of the reunification. And so where that happens. And so anything that dramatically reduces that should be of significant interest to state and federal governments as a cost savings, which I think that in these times, these kinds of arguments, I mean, it’s hard as a child abuse professional because we want people to do it just because it’s the right thing. You know, we want to go, it’s good for kids, it’s good for families. Like let’s just agree to do it. But in these times, often it’s the economic argument that moves policymakers. And I think you have really contributed to the literature and to the conversation by this piece of literature documenting the significant savings that could be accrued with these policies. I’m curious about since this has been published, have you had any feedback from policymakers? And if so, what has that done?

 

LB:

We haven’t had any direct feedback to my knowledge from policymakers themselves. This paper’s gotten a lot of attention from more media. It’s in part because of some of the reasons you’ve mentioned. To my knowledge, though, the policymaking audience hasn’t quite gotten it. And you know, it’s very difficult to get scientific research in the hands of policymakers. People do it and there are lots of places that really invest in this. And we’re working with some more science dissemination and science communication type folks who can do that. That’s not exactly my skill set, for example, or the other researchers on this paper. We’re researchers, so that’s what we do, all. So yeah. And also right now, if we think about the audience that really needs to hear this, is folks in states that are on the margin of having a paid family leave program, right? States that are absolutely not interested in a paid family leave program will not be moved by this piece, at least probably won’t be as moved as we’d like them to be. But there are a lot of states that are sort of thinking about a paid family leave program. They’re getting on board with the other handful of states that have recently enacted a policy in the last few years. And so those are really the states that we’d like to target a bit more with this. And so we we’re hoping that the science, communication, and research dissemination folks can maybe target those states a bit more seems like a good strategy.

 

TH:

I’m all for reaching out and addressing the low-hanging fruit, but I have to tell you, one of the things I was thinking as I read the paper again in preparation for a conversation today is that there’s a lot for people all across the political spectrum to like about this. First of all, you have a lot of, you know, in the conservative world, you have a whole group of pronatalists. And if you’re pro-family and pronatalist, you should love the idea of paid family leave.

And its effects on keeping kids out of the child welfare system. And I think that if you are, on the other hand, on the progressive end of the spectrum, there’s a lot to love about it generally there as well. And so I think sometimes this gets caught up in a lot of or is sort of viewed as somehow some sort of progressive policy. And I think that it really is something that could and should if the arguments were made properly attract the support of folks all across the spectrum. I don’t know. I say this because at NCA we talk in a bipartisan, nonpartisan way all of the time to policymakers about child abuse, and we find a lot of support. And so I never want to make the assumption that there’s some, you know, particular part of the political spectrum that just has no interest or cannot be persuaded. I just sort of feel like we’re in the persuasion business. So knowing that and thinking about that, that, you know, we’re ever optimistic about our ability to persuade, what do you think child abuse professionals should be doing with this information? And how should we be sharing it in a way that could be persuasive to folks who are on the fence or otherwise, maybe need even a bigger nudge than that?

 

LB:

Yeah. So I do still think that states that have at least had some legislation, some form of a paid family leave program that was proposed at some point by someone, some representative in their state, I still think those are going to be the lowest hanging fruit, right? They have something on paper. There’s somebody there who is clearly interested in this. But to be clear, I am not an advocate. So I don’t know the right strategies for influencing, if you will. For me as a researcher, the data speak for themselves, right?

 

TH:

You’ve put this out in the universe. It’s for us to take it and run with it from here. I mean, I think that’s fair, right? That’s fair. We didn’t do the research you did. Now it’s on us to go and advocate for these things.

 

LB:

But I do think you’re right that there’s both a human element here, an ethical component. But if that’s not enough, then there is an economic argument. And we did spend quite a bit of time in the paper discussing the economic element of it because we do find that to be a very compelling argument. That I mean, we put in the numbers of cost savings and the expenditures.

And I think what we actually included was just the direct expenditures of the investigations and child welfare. But as we’ve already mentioned, there are these very long-term savings. If you can reduce child maltreatment, it’s such a costly societal problem. If we can reduce child maltreatment in any form early in life, there will be enormous cost savings in the long run. And so hitting that point home too, I think is very helpful. Policymakers tend to be a bit more short sighted just because of their election cycles. And so they’re more compelled by the five-year timeline compared, you know, everybody says, for example, their program is going to be cost savings in 50 years or something. And so although that’s true in this case, and you can cite the numbers, anything that we can do to sort of show even in the short run, there will be these cost saving measures and these human elements as well that are so critical.

 

TH:

Absolutely. I mean, I think that one of the things that we’ve talked about on the podcast many times is that people have developed a sort of helpless feeling around neglect. What can be done to really drive down those numbers? And I’m not saying researchers feel that way. I’m saying that I think they’ve been so steady over a period of time that I think and lots of programs have been tried that I think

People sort of feel like, my God, it feels so intractable. Well, we know actually a lot about neglect and what feeds into that in terms of substance abuse and economic stressors and like all these other things, right? Some of which we’ve talked about. But if we could drive that down for infants, that alone would make a huge difference. And if this is one of the le we’re not saying it’s the only lever, but if this is one lever that we’ve documented could make a difference in that, then that I think opens up an avenue to pursue. So we don’t just sit around and go, it’s terrible, you know, neglect. So bad. What are we going to do about it? We could go, well, actually there is something we could do about it. We could pursue a policy that alleviates some of these stressors that contribute to it and at least for infants, give them a safer childhood than they otherwise might have. So well, where are your research interests taking you next? Is it on this topic or something else?

 

LB:

Yeah, so this sort of was at the end of my research agenda focusing on income support policies and their effects on child maltreatment. And in some ways, when I first started this research ten years, over ten years ago, there was very little in this space in terms of income support policies, things like the minimum wage, the earned income tax credit, paid family leave, SNAP program, WIC program, any sort of program that provides either an in-kind benefit or cash benefits to families, do those policies really affect child maltreatment? Can they be a policy lever that we can use to reduce child maltreatment? When I first started this work, there was not much. There was very little research in that space. And so I made the last decade pretty much devoted to answering that question. And one question that remained after much of this work was what if we just give parents cash? What if we just give them money instead of tying it to employment or tying it to food assistance or tying it to housing assistance or tying it to something? What if we just give them cash? Does that help reduce child maltreatment or does it actually make it worse? And this is a pretty controversial topic, at least it was when we first started this work before the COVID pandemic. And then all of a sudden, during the COVID pandemic, our government’s just started giving people money.

 

TH:

You had a natural experiment, right?

 

LB:

So my latest papers in this line of work were really focused on these universal and unconditional cash transfer programs. And the idea here is that our current system, we remove kids from their homes and we put them in foster homes and then we provide income support for those in the foster system to the foster parents. And the question sort of was, well, what if we just give that money to the parents?

So I have some papers on this line of work. One is with Carrie Rayson, who’s co-author on this Pay to Family Leave paper, along with Annalisa Packham, where we look at the Alaska public fund dividend, which is the starting unconditional cash transfer program in the United States. And so that program on average gives families about, you know, twelve hundred dollars per person per year. And the only caveat there is that in order to be eligible for that benefit, one must have been born by a certain date. And so we use that birth date cutoff to basically compare infants that are extremely similar to one another. But one gets sixteen hundred dollars and one doesn’t. And so we linked with the assistance of the folks in Alaska, we linked some data across a variety of administrative data sources. And we do find that additional one thousand dollars reduces crowd welfare contact by about ten percent within the first three years of life.

So that was sort of the peak of that research agenda. Most of this work was sort of building up to that, you know, these different income support policies where that question was really, okay, let’s get rid of the support policy part of it and just income. What’s the effect of income? and so once we sort of got to that point, by now the floodgates have opened and the research on a variety of economic factors and economic security and its role in child maltreatment prevention, that research space has ballooned. So that’s what my plan was. But you know, I think I’ve done my part in that space and yeah and some earlier career researchers, newer researchers are who were doing this way better and way cooler than what I could do anymore. They’ve sort of taken over and for that I’m extremely grateful. So my research agenda has pivoted a bit so that I can think about other questions in sort of a similar way, thinking about what we don’t know yet. That’s a really big question and try to at least pry the door open on that.

 

TH:

Well, thank you so much for your years of researching this particular issue. I think it’s a vital one and if other folks are picking up the baton and carrying it on, you should feel flattered by that. You and your colleagues were the genesis of that, the forerunners of what will be to come. So is there anything else that I should have asked you and didn’t, or anything else that you wanted to make sure that we talked about today?

 

LB:

Usually the point that I want to bring home is the economic impacts of child maltreatment. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that. But child maltreatment is a hugely important topic that has not gotten the research attention that it deserves or the policy attention that it deserves. In part it’s very prevalent. It’s a very pervasive problem. You know, the statistics are that basically 37% of all children in the US are the subject of an investigation by a child welfare agency. That number is even higher for Black children. It’s 51%. So you know, flip a coin and odds are that a Black child in the United States will have some contact with the child welfare system in the United States during their childhood. That’s huge. And we just don’t know enough about what to do about this.

And so, you know, it’s also a very expensive problem, not just for those families and for those children, but also for the government, for society, for taxpayers. I mean, it’s a huge problem. And it’s a very expensive one, and it leads to all sorts of other expenses for society later on, whether it’s mental health, whether it’s substance use, whether it’s criminal justice involvement. I try really hard to bring that element to life. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that in in this conversation. But just to reiterate how expensive of a problem it is.

And how pervasive of a problem it is, and how we desperately need more research on what to do about this.

 

TH:

We definitely do. Well, best wishes on your next steps in research and whatever has piqued your interest these days and come back and visit with us anytime. Thanks, Lindsey.

 

LB:

Thank you so much for having me.

 

TH:

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