Why Have Child Maltreatment and Child Victimization Declined?

Abstract

Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40-70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology. Multiple factors probably contributed. In particular, economic prosperity, increasing agents of social intervention, and psychiatric pharmacology have advantages over some of the other explanations in accounting for the breadth and timing of the improvements.

Trends in Hospitalization Rates and Severity of Injuries From Abuse in Young Children, 1997–2009

“…2,22 This decline has been specifically driven by falling rates of substantiated cases of physical and sexual abuse. 2 The NCANDS definition more closely aligned with injury from abuse serious enough to require hospitalization is deaths attributable to maltreatment.…”

Why the Crime Drop?

“…The study was conducted because official sources, particularly the child protection system data, had been questioned, and so this review compared such sources to self-report surveys. Our summary of their findings, shown as table 1, gives very brief coverage of a lot of information and methodological issues that are covered in detail in the original studies and by Finkelhor andJones (2004, 2006). The conclusion of Finkelhor and Jones is worth repeating at length:…”

“…This hypothesis may warrant further close examination but is not discussed in detail elsewhere in this essay because there are not, to our knowledge, any existing attempts at empirical evaluation. Finkelhor and Jones (2012) review evidence from different sources relating to trends in sexual abuse and physical abuse of children in the United States. The study was conducted because official sources, particularly the child protection system data, had been questioned, and so this review compared such sources to self-report surveys.…”

Prevalence of child victimization, abuse, crime, and violence exposure.

“…One review highlighted some factors that were powerful enough to effect broad changes and temporally situated properly with respect to the onset of the recent declines in child victimization (Finkelhor & Jones, 2006). First, a large and sustained economic prosperity in the United States began in the early 1990s.…”