More than 900,000 children became victims of child abuse and neglect in 2003, yet despite this appalling annual toll, relatively little is known about the long-term effects of child maltreatment. The social cost of maltreatment will be magnified if there is a significant link between maltreatment and crime later in life. The existence of such a link is a staple of the popular media and has also been the subject of considerable scholarly research into this question, yet much of the existing research suffers from limitations. Our first specific aim is to build to produce convincing estimates of the effects of maltreatment of future propensity to engage in crime. Our estimates will improve on the previous literature in several ways. First, by focusing on multiple types of maltreatment and a wide range of outcomes related to crime. Second, by using the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative data set which includes a large """"""""control"""""""" group of children who report neither maltreatment nor criminal activity. Third by controlling carefully for confounders using a variety of statistical techniques. Fourth, we investigate differences in the effects of maltreatment by gender and socioeconomic status. Our second specific aim is to develop empirical tests of implications of some of the leading theories about why maltreatment causes some victims to commit crimes. Leading theories include Social Learning Theory, Social Control Theory, Social-Psychological Strain Theory, and economic theories of crime. These theories suggest that certain risk factors, such as having poor role models (father in jail), disrupted social bonds (e.g. through homelessness or poor relationships with family members), and cumulative stresses (e.g. through illness) may all exacerbate (mediate) the effects of maltreatment. Economic theories of crime are complementary with these other theories in that they suggest that the primary driver for criminal activity is the individual's impaired earnings capacity, which may in turn reflect the effects of maltreatment on academic performance. This too will be investigated. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health to examine the effect of child maltreatment on adults' propensity to commit crime. Our work improves on previous estimates by using a large, nationally representative data set, controlling for other differences between victims of maltreatment and other children, and by examining the relationship between maltreatment, socioeconomic status, and child gender. ? ? ? ?
| Currie, Janet; Tekin, Erdal (2012) Understanding the cycle: childhood maltreatment and future crime. J Hum Resour 47:509-49 |
| Currie, Janet; Widom, Cathy Spatz (2010) Long-term consequences of child abuse and neglect on adult economic well-being. Child Maltreat 15:111-20 |
