Short-Term Effects of Tax Credits on Rates of Child Maltreatment Reports in the United States.

Objectives: Poverty and low income are associated with increased risk for child maltreatment. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) are among the largest antipoverty programs in the United States. We estimated associations between income transfer payments via the EITC and CTC and child maltreatment reports in the period shortly after families receive payments from these programs.

Methods: We linked weekly EITC and CTC refund data from the Internal Revenue Service to state-specific child maltreatment report data from 48 states and the District of Columbia during the 2015 through 2018 tax seasons (January - April). We leveraged the natural experiment of a legislated change in the timing of EITC and CTC transfer payments to low-income families and quasi-experimental methods to estimate the association between EITC and CTC payments and child maltreatment reports.

Results: EITC and CTC payments were associated with lower state-level rates of child maltreatment reports. For each additional $1000 in per-child EITC and CTC tax refunds, state-level rates of reported child maltreatment declined in the week of and 4 weeks following refund payments by an overall estimated 5.0% (95% confidence interval = 2.3%-7.7%).

Conclusions: Federal income assistance programs are associated with immediate reductions in child maltreatment reporting. These results are particularly relevant at this time, as expansions to such programs continue to be discussed at the state and federal levels.