Research Seed Grant | 2005-2006
Nature and Determinants of Child Abuse
by Douglas Almond (Economics) and Lena Edlund (Economics)
Child abuse is a persistent and disturbing feature of American life. While economists have increasingly studied myriad aspects of child welfare, child abuse by contrast has received scant attention. This study will analyze child abuse patterns with an innovative approach. First, it will use detailed microdata that have not previously been used on a comparable scale to describe and analyze abuse patterns. Second, it will test a hypothesis from evolutionary ecology that has not, to our knowledge, been applied to child abuse patterns. The core predictions of this hypothesis, including the tendency for abused infants to be male, are observed in the data.
