PCA America Costs of Child Abuse

Total Estimated Cost of Child Abuse and Neglect in the United States

Ching-Tung Wang, Ph.D. and John Holton, Ph.D.

Child abuse and neglect are preventable, yet each year in the United States, close to one million children are confirmed victims of child maltreatment.  An extensive body of research provides promising and best practices on what works to improve child safety and well-being outcomes and reduce the occurrence of child abuse and neglect.  These efforts are essential as child abuse and neglect have pervasive and long-lasting effects on children, their families, and the society.   Adverse consequences for children’s development often are evident immediately, encompassing multiple domains including physical, emotional, social, and cognitive.  For many children, these effects extend far beyond childhood into adolescence and adulthood, potentially compromising the lifetime productivity of maltreatment victims (Daro, 1988).

It is well documented that children who have been abused or neglected are more likely to experience adverse outcomes throughout their life span in a number of areas:  

• Poor physical health (e.g., chronic fatigue, altered immune function, hypertension, sexually transmitted diseases, obesity); 
• Poor emotional and mental health (e.g., depression, anxiety, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts and attempts, post-traumatic stress disorder); 
• Social difficulties (e.g., insecure attachments with caregivers, which may lead to difficulties in developing trusting relationships with peers and adults later in life); 
• Cognitive dysfunction (e.g., deficits in attention, abstract reasoning, language development, and problem-solving skills, which ultimately affect academic achievement and school performance); 
• High-risk health behaviors (e.g., a higher number of lifetime sexual partners, younger age at first voluntary intercourse, teen pregnancy, alcohol and substance abuse); and 
• Behavioral problems (e.g., aggression, juvenile delinquency, adult criminality, abusive or violent behavior) (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2006; Goldman, Salus, Wolcott, & Kennedy, 2003; Hagele, 2005).

The costs of responding to the impact of child abuse and neglect are borne by the victims and their families but also by society.  This brief updates an earlier publication documenting the nationwide costs as a result of child abuse and neglect (Fromm, 2001).  Similar to the earlier document, this brief places costs in  two categories: direct costs, that is, those costs associated with the immediate needs of children who are abused or neglected;  and indirect costs, that is, those costs associated with the long-term and/or secondary effects of child abuse and neglect.  All estimated costs are presented in 2007 dollars. Adjustments for inflation have been conducted using the price indexes for gross domestic product published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://www.bea.gov).