Impoverishment and Child Maltreatment in African American and European American Neighborhoods

Although it is well documented that child maltreatment exerts a deleterious impact on child adaptation, much less is known about the precise etiological pathways that eventuate in child abuse and neglect. This paper reports on a multimethod ecological study of the relationship between neighborhood structural factors and child maltreatment reports in African American and European American census tracts. The study had two major components. First, in an aggregate analysis, the effects of four measures of community structure (impoverishment, child care burden, instability, and geographic isolation) on child maltreatment report rates were examined separately for predominantly African American (n = 94) and predominantly European American (n = 189) census tracts. Impoverishment in particular had a significantly weaker effect on maltreatment rates in African American than in European American neighborhoods. Second, focused ethnographies were conducted in four selected census tracts with child maltreatment report rates in the highest and lowest quartiles. Ethnographic data point to the importance of the social fabric in accounting for differences in child maltreatment report rates by predominant neighborhood ethnicity.