Analysis of longitudinal patterns of child maltreatment reports in the United States

Background: Child maltreatment is a continuous and prevalent issue, and victims of maltreatment often suffer adverse effects well into adulthood. Since child maltreatment rates tend to be clustered geographically and temporally, intervention programs are best implemented at a local level, targeting local risk factors for sustained and effective reduction over time.

Objective: Quantifying geographic variation in child maltreatment rate trajectories can help states identify local risk factors to guide program development and resource allocation.

Participants and setting: National child maltreatment data from 2011 to 2020 from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) was used to quantify child maltreatment rates (overall and substantiated) over time.

Methods: Latent trajectory analysis was conducted to identify groups of states in the United States that share distinct temporal patterns of child maltreatment rates. Child maltreatment data was linked to the American Community Survey data to obtain community-level characteristics.

Results: Three groups of states with distinct child maltreatment trajectories were identified: 43 states with stable trajectory, 4 states with increasing number of reports over time, and 5 states with decreasing reports over time. Although states with a stable trajectory had some characteristics associated with higher socioeconomic status, such as lower percentage of families below poverty level, and lower percentage of unemployed laborers, there was not a consistent trend in socioeconomic characteristics between the three groups.

Conclusions: Our results indicate there to be three groups of states with distinct child maltreatment trajectories, with majority of the states following a stable trajectory over time. There was not a consistent trend in socioeconomic characteristics between the three groups. While the results do not allow us to draw firm conclusions about socioeconomic characteristics associated with maltreatment trajectories, it does provide data-driven evidence for the existing assumption of a national average maltreatment trajectory.