Measuring child maltreatment risk in communities: a life table approach

The purpose of this article is to: (1) illustrate the application of life table methodology to child abuse and neglect report data and (2) demonstrate the use of indicators derived from the life tables for monitoring the risk of child maltreatment within a community.

Computerized records of child maltreatment reports from a large, urban county in Ohio are cumulated for 11 years and linked for each child. Life table methods are used to estimate the probability that children from birth to age 10 will be reported victims of maltreatment by age, race, and urban or suburban residence.

Using life tables, the estimates in the county of this study are that 33.4% of African American children and 11.8% of White children will appear in substantiated or indicated child abuse or neglect report(s) by their 10th birthday. The age-specific probability of a maltreatment report is highest in the first year of life for both groups. The probability of a child being reported for a substantiated or indicated incident of maltreatment before his or her 10th birthday is more than three times higher for city dwellers than for suburbanites in the urban county studied here.

Life table methodology is useful for creating child well-being indicators for communities. Such indicators reveal that a larger portion of the child population is affected by maltreatment reports than would be concluded from examining cross-sectional rates and can be used to identify racial or geographic disparities.