Child abuse and neglect, intimate partner violence, and youth violence are pervasive, preventable public health issues with negative lifelong consequences. Family economic policies, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Minimum Wage (MW), and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), provide economic support to low-income families who are often at greatest risk of family and youth violence. Although family economic policies reduce key risk factors for violence, including caregiver stress and mental health problems due to economic pressure, there are limited studies examining these policies as violence prevention strategies. Extant literature examining the effect of economic policies on violence have left several important gaps in knowledge. Studies have provided limited understanding of the mediators that link policies to violence outcomes, failed to adequately examine the effect of policies on individuals by race/ethnicity, and offered a relatively limited understanding of how economic policies interact with one another, despite evidence that individuals often experience more than one policy at a time. Our study seeks to fill in these gaps through a series of quasi experimental, empirical analyses that will rigorously evaluate the effect of TANF, MW, and EITC as primary prevention strategies for child maltreatment, adult IPV, and youth violence. We measure the effect of economic policies on participants in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Cohort, a longitudinal birth- cohort of children born to relatively low-income, urban families who are among those disproportionately affected by family and youth violence and economic policies. Our research adds to the literature in several important ways. First, our research is guided by a well-established theoretical model, the Family Stress Model, adapted for family and youth violence, which guides our selection of caregiver depression as a mediator between the policy environment and violence. Second, this study explicitly examines the effect of policies by race/ethnicity. We hypothesize that economic policies may be especially protective for African Americans who disproportionately live in poverty and experience higher rates of family and youth violence compared to Whites that disappear or are reversed after accounting for income and other material factors. Third, we are able to leverage a complete database of EITC, TANF, and MW policies to evaluate the effect of each policy alone and in synergy with the others. This study aligns with violence prevention priorities set by NCIPC by evaluating societal-level strategies to prevent multiple forms of violence that enhance resiliency within families and incorporate a dual-generation approach for caregivers and their children.
Child maltreatment, adult intimate partner violence (IPV), and youth violence are pervasive, preventable public health issues with lifelong negative social, behavioral, and physical health outcomes. Economic security policies are promising primary prevention strategies for violence that provide economic support to low-income families, including African American families who experience persistent disparities in poverty and family and youth violence. Our study proposes a series of rigorous, quasi experimental analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Minimum Wage, and Earned Income Tax Credit in preventing family and youth violence and reducing violence disparities.
