America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2009
Child Maltreatment
Child maltreatment includes physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, as well as neglect (including medical neglect). Maltreatment in general is associated with a number of negative outcomes for children, including lower school achievement, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, and mental health problems.29 Certain types of maltreatment can result in long-term physical, social, and emotional problems, and even death. For example, "shaken baby syndrome" can result in mental retardation, cerebral palsy, or paralysis. Child maltreatment includes both fatal and nonfatal maltreatment.
Indicator FAM7: Rate of substantiated maltreatment reports of children ages 0–17 by age, 1998–2007
NOTE: The count of child victims is based on the number of investigations by Child Protective Services that found the child to be a victim of one or more types of maltreatment. The count of victims is, therefore, a report-based count and is a "duplicated count," since an individual child may have been maltreated more than once. The number of states reporting varies from year to year. States vary in their definition of abuse and neglect. Data from 2007 are not directly comparable with prior years as differences may be partially attributed to changes in one state's procedures for determination of maltreatment. Other reasons include the increase in children who received an "other" disposition, the decrease in the percentage of children who received a substantiated or indicated disposition, and the decrease in the number of children who received an investigation or assessment.
SOURCE: Administration for Children and Families, National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System.
- In 2007, the rate of substantiated reports of child maltreatment was 11 per 1,000 children ages 0–17.30
- From 1998 through 2002, the rate of substantiated reports of child maltreatment varied between 12 and 13 reports per 1,000 children and remained at approximately 12 reports per 1,000 children between 2002 and 2006.
- Younger children are more frequently victims of child maltreatment than older children. In 2007, there were 22 substantiated child maltreatment reports per 1,000 children under age 1, compared with 13 for children ages 1–3, 12 for children ages 4–7, 9 for children ages 8–11, 9 for children ages 12–15, and 5 for adolescents ages 16–17.
- Higher rates of maltreatment were reported for girls than boys (11 reports per 1,000 for females vs. 10 for males).
- While neglect is the most common type of maltreatment across all age groups, types of maltreatment vary by age. In 2007, 79 percent of substantiated child maltreatment reports for children ages 0–3 involved neglect, compared to 62 percent for adolescents ages 16–17. Twenty-one percent of substantiated reports for adolescents ages 16–17 involved physical abuse and 17 percent involved sexual abuse. Among substantiated reports for children ages 0–3, 13 percent involved physical abuse and 2 percent involved sexual abuse.
- In 2007, Black, non-Hispanic children had the highest rates of substantiated child maltreatment reports (17 reports per 1,000 children), followed by American Indian or Alaska Native children (14), children of two or more races (14), Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander children (14), Hispanic children (10), White, non-Hispanic children (9), and Asian children (2).
FAM7.A HTML Table, FAM7.B HTML Table
29 Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, Department of Health and Human Services. (2003). A Coordinated Response to Child Abuse and Neglect: The Foundation for Practice. Retrieved August 28, 2006, from the Child Welfare Information Gateway, http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/foundation/foundationf.cfm.
30 Data from 2007 are not directly comparable with prior years as differences may be partially attributed to changes in one state's procedures for determination of maltreatment. Other reasons include the increase in children who received an "other" disposition, the decrease in the percentage of children who received a substantiated or indicated disposition, and the decrease in the number of children who received an investigation or assessment.