Societal Factors of Child Maltreatment: Focusing on the Role of Neighborhood Poverty

1
Societal Factors of Child MaltreatmentFocusing
on the Role of Neighborhood Poverty

• Bong Joo Lee
• Seoul National University

2
Background

• The Child Protection System in Korea
• Revision of Child Welfare Law in 2000 specified
  abuse and neglect as a condition requiring child
  protection through government intervention for
  the first time in Korea
• Before the legislation, there was no law
  mandating the reporting of suspected child abuse
  and neglect
• The Law
• Provided definitions of child abuse and neglect
• Instituted mandated reporting system (24-hour
  hotline)
• Instituted regional child abuse/neglect
  prevention centers

3
Previous Research onChild Maltreatment in Korea

• Very limited empirical research on the risk
  factors of child maltreatment
• Most research has focused on psychiatric or
  psychological factors employing the medical
  model
• Very little attention has been given to the
  social context as risk factors for child
  maltreatment
• With lack of attention to the larger social
  context in which maltreatment occurs, the
  perspective can be used as blaming the victim

4
Purpose of the Study

• To empirically examine the effects of societal
  factors on child maltreatment in Korea
• To investigate the relationship between reported
  child maltreatment rates and poverty, family
  structure, level of education, and housing
  characteristics at the neighborhood level

5
Public Assistance Receipt in a Korean City
6
Divorce Rates
7
Child Maltreatment Rates
8
Public Assistance and Child Maltreatment Rates in
Seoul, Korea
9
Method

• Dependent variable child maltreatment rates
• Used administrative data on substantiated reports
  of child maltreatment for 3 years (2002-2004)
• Through geocoding the addresses in the reports,
  neighborhoods of the reports were identified
  (1,233 Dongs in the seven largest Metro areas in
  Korea)

10
Method

• Independent Variables
• Public assistance receipt rate
• Per capita property tax
• Divorce rates
• single father households
• single mother households
• high school graduates
• Number of rooms per person in the household

11
A Caution Visibility Hypothesis

• The study uses administrative data on
  substantiated reports
• The relationship between reports and poverty
  might be due to the fact that poor families are
  more likely to be found by CPS
• One pathway for being found could be poor
  families have more frequent contacts with social
  services
• If the visibility hypothesis is true, we can
  expect that areas with higher public assistance
  receipt rates will have higher rates of report by
  social service workers

12
Analysis

• Used Tobit model the dependent variable has
  uneven distribution (many Dongs have 0 report)
• Used STATA statistical software to estimate models

13
Rates of Child Maltreatments
14
Percent of Reports by Social Service Workers
15
Independent Variables
16
Multivariate Analysis ResultsChild Maltreatment
Rates
17
Testing the Visibility HypothesisDo poor
neighborhoods have more reports by social service
workers?
18
Conclusion

• The first study in Korea to examine the
  relationship between communitys socioeconomic
  characteristics and child maltreatment using
  neighborhood level indicators
• The results show that neighborhoods with higher
  rates of public assistance receipt, divorce
  rates, and lower levels of property tax have
  higher rates of child maltreatment (verified that
  the results are not likely due to the visibility
  effect)
• Intervention efforts of child abuse and neglect
  should go beyond focusing on individual
  perpetrators and/or child victims to altering
  neighborhood characteristics
• Efforts to prevent child maltreatment should
  focus on neighborhood disorganization factors,
  such as neighborhood poverty and family
  dissolution