A prevalence-based approach to societal costs occurring in consequence of child abuse and neglect

Abstract

BackgroundTraumatization in childhood can result in lifelong health impairment and may have a negative impact on other areas of life such as education, social contacts and employment as well. Despite the frequent occurrence of traumatization, which is reflected in a 14.5 percent prevalence rate of severe child abuse and neglect, the economic burden of the consequences is hardly known. The objective of this prevalence-based cost-of-illness study is to show how impairment of the individual is reflected in economic trauma follow-up costs borne by society as a whole in Germany and to compare the results with other countries’ costs.MethodsFrom a societal perspective trauma follow-up costs were estimated using a bottom-up approach. The literature-based prevalence rate includes emotional, physical and sexual abuse as well as physical and emotional neglect in Germany. Costs are derived from individual case scenarios of child endangerment presented in a German cost-benefit-analysis. A comparison with trauma follow-up costs in Australia, Canada and the USA is based on purchasing power parity.ResultsThe annual trauma follow-up costs total to a margin of EUR 11.1 billion for the lower bound and to EUR 29.8 billion for the upper bound. This equals EUR 134.84 and EUR 363.58, respectively, per capita for the German population. These results conform to the ones obtained from cost studies conducted in Australia (lower bound) and Canada (upper bound), whereas the result for the United States is much lower.ConclusionChild abuse and neglect result in trauma follow-up costs of economically relevant magnitude for the German society. Although the result is well in line with other countries’ costs, the general lack of data should be fought in order to enable more detailed future studies. Creating a reliable cost data basis in the first place can pave the way for long-term cost savings.

Treatment of dissociative disorders and reported changes in inpatient and outpatient cost estimates

“…In their review of economic costs of domestic violence, Waters and colleagues  (2004) found that domestic violence costs the U.S. as much as 12.6 billion USD annually. Other studies have estimated that child abuse and neglect costs the U.S. over 100 billion USD each year (Wang & Holton, 2007) and, internationally, the cost of childhood maltreatment ranges between 11.1 billion and 29.8 billion Euro (EUR) annually (see Habetha, Bleich, Weidenhammer, & Fegert, 2012), or the equivalent of 12.4–33.3 billion USD 1 . The cost estimates vary widely according to the types of costs included by researchers.…”

Association of child maltreatment subtypes and long-term physical health in a German representative sample

“…Child maltreatment leads to a significant reduction in lifespan of up to 20 years (Brown et al, 2009). Beside its devastating consequences on the life of each individual victim, child maltreatment results in an enormous economic burden, with annual costs between 11 and 30 billion euro in Germany alone (Habetha, Bleich, Weidenhammer, & Fegert, 2012). …”

Prävention sexualisierter Gewalt – Evaluation eines universitären Seminars für angehende Lehrkräfte

“…Denn bislang werden Präventionsprogramme zu selten empirisch evaluiert (Anderson und Whiston 2005;DeGue et al 2014;McCall 1993;Yeater und O'Donohue 1999). Dies ist hinsichtlich der Kosten (Habetha et al 2012) und vor allem der Folgen für Betroffene problematisch. Darüber hinaus fehlen in der Evaluationsforschung weitgehend Untersuchungen zu universitären Veranstaltungen.…”