A national study of child maltreatment reporting at the county level: Interactions among race/ethnicity, rurality and poverty

Child maltreatment report rates vary widely among states and counties. A portion of the variation likely reflects varying community-level risk and protective factors, but the variation also likely reflects community characteristics unrelated to risk, raising questions of equity and justice, in addition to safety. This study builds on previous research that focused only on the U.S. South to investigate nationally how county racial/ethnic compositions, poverty rates, and rurality relate to child maltreatment report rates. Aggregated county-level data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) from nearly all U.S. counties (n = 2,966 in 2015) were linked to data from the U.S. census and other sources. Bivariate tests and multi-level regression models assessed county-level factors associated with the child maltreatment investigated report rate. Consistent with previous studies, despite higher child poverty rates, child maltreatment report rates were lower in rural counties with majority populations of color compared to other counties. In addition, although county-level child poverty rates were generally positively associated with child maltreatment report rates, child poverty was not positively associated with child maltreatment report rates in rural counties with majority populations of color, primarily due to low report rates in rural counties with majority Black populations. To our knowledge, this is the first national child maltreatment study to disentangle county rurality from racial/ethnic composition by specifically investigating rural counties with majority populations of color.