Money matters: Does the minimum wage affect child maltreatment rates?

- Children living in low-income families are at a greater risk of child maltreatment.
- Causal evidence for the relationship between income and child maltreatment is scarce.
- We use changes in the minimum wage as an exogenous increase to a family's income.
- We find that increasing the minimum wage leads to fewer child maltreatment reports.
- The reduction is especially strong for neglect among young and school-aged children.

Research has consistently demonstrated that children living in low-income families, particularly those in poverty, are at a greater risk of child maltreatment; however, causal evidence for this relationship is sparse. We use child maltreatment reports from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System: Child File from 2004 to 2013 to investigate the relationship between changes in a state's minimum wage and changes in child maltreatment rates. We find that increases in the minimum wage lead to a decline in overall child maltreatment reports, particularly neglect reports. Specifically, a $1 increase in the minimum wage implies a statistically significant 9.6% decline in neglect reports. This decline is concentrated among young children (ages 0-5) and school-aged children (ages 6-12); the effect diminishes among adolescents and is not significant. We do not find that the effect of increases in the minimum wage varies based on the child's race. These findings are robust to a number of specifications. Our results suggest that policies that increase incomes of the working poor can improve children's welfare, especially younger children, quite substantially.