The path forward is clear: strengthening household financial security can reduce child abuse and neglect by improving the opportunity for parents to meet their children’s basic needs, provide developmentally appropriate child care, and reduce parental stress and depression, both risk factors for child abuse and neglect. Overall, research has shown that children in households with low socioeconomic status experience “neglect” at about seven times the rate of other children and that risk factors for child abuse and neglect include low parental income, parenting stress, community violence, and concentrated neighborhood disadvantage (e.g., high poverty and residential instability, high unemployment rates).
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