Demography

Two Decades of Child Welfare System Contact in the Global North: A Research Note on Trends in 44 Countries

Abstract Child maltreatment and child welfare system contact are both associated with an elevated risk of adverse outcomes in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Yet, data on variation in system contact are available for only a handful of countries, limiting knowledge about the societal correlates of system contact. As reported in this research note, we identified, collected, and harmonized administrative data on child welfare agency investigations, confirmed maltreatment, and placements into out-of-home care for 44 countries in the Global North. We analyzed 15 sociodemographic factors commonly associated with child maltreatment and child welfare system contact. Results support three core conclusions. First, data are much more available on late-stage system contact (e.g., foster care caseloads) than for early-stage system contact (e.g., investigations). Second, whereas early-stage contact tended to be on the rise in most countries, late-stage contact was stable or declining. Cross-national variation in these trends was generally less substantial than cross-national variation in levels of child welfare system contact, indicating relatively stable cross-national differences. Third, cross-national variation in out-of-home care largely reflected, but was not reducible to, regional and sociocultural variation: we find little evidence for universal drivers of foster care caseloads across the Global North.

1 February 2025

Demography

The Demographic and Socioeconomic Consequences of Restricting Access to Marriage for Young Immigrants in Denmark

Abstract In July 2002, Danish reforms limited the marriage opportunities for all Danish and non–European Union (EU) citizens younger than 24 living in Denmark who wished (or whose parents wished for them) to marry someone from outside the EU. Before the reform, more than 80% of first- and second-generation immigrants from outside the EU married spouses from their parents’ origin countries; the reform drastically changed their marriage market. We examine the policy’s effects on subsequent marriage behavior, the transition to motherhood, human capital accumulation, and labor market activities using full-population administrative data on 578,380 Danish-born first- and second-generation non-EU immigrants born in 1972–1990 and a difference-in-differences design. We find that the policy delayed marriages among individuals with an immigrant background, extended premarital cohabitation, changed the composition of spouses, and delayed and decreased in-wedlock fertility. Finally, the duration of obtained formal education increased. Our results emphasize that reforms constraining access to external marriage markets can have lasting impacts on marriage demographics among immigrants.

1 February 2025

Social Forces

Parental Union Dissolution and Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Problems: Addressing Selection and Considering the Role of Post-Dissolution Living Arrangements

Abstract Increasingly children whose parents no longer live together are living in two households, alternating between family contexts. A growing literature documents strong, descriptive heterogeneities in children’s wellbeing across living arrangements. We combine longitudinal survey and administrative population data on 6000 Danish children born in 1995 to study how children’s emotional and behavioral problems change following parental union dissolution. Extending the existing, predominantly descriptive literature, we use several panel regression strategies that aim to control for unobservable confounding together with repeated measurement of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire to study children’s problems increase after parental union dissolution and examine heterogeneity across post-dissolution living arrangements. We find a substantial increase in emotional and behavioral problems following union dissolution, but only little evidence for substantial heterogeneity existing across post-dissolution family constellations and living arrangements. Our findings indicate that not only there is casual effect of parental union dissolution on children’s long-term wellbeing, but also that existing descriptive findings on differences across living arrangements likely are due to selection.

25 January 2025

Nature Human Behaviour

Intergenerational persistence of poverty in five high-income countries

Childhood poverty increases the likelihood of adult poverty. However, past research offers conflicting accounts of cross-national variation in the strength of—and mechanisms underpinning—the intergenerational persistence of poverty. Here the authors investigate differences in intergenerational poverty in the United States, Australia, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom using administrative- and survey-based panel datasets.

28 October 2024

The Scandinavian Journal of Economics

The making and unmaking of opportunity: educational mobility in 20th-century Denmark

We examine trends in intergenerational educational mobility throughout the 20th century in Denmark. We demonstrate that major reforms in compulsory schooling substantially increased not only the levels of education but also intergenerational mobility in education for children born in the 1940s through to the 1960s. However, even as college education has expanded significantly for children born in the 1970s and 1980s, educational mobility has been declining. We empirically test different mechanisms that could account for this decline in educational mobility.

17 May 2024

American Economic Journal

Refugee Benefit Cuts

This paper analyzes the effects of Denmark’s Start Aid welfare reform that targets refugees. Implemented in 2002, it enables us to study not only the reform’s immediate effects but also its longer-term consequences and its repeal a decade later. The reform-induced large transfer cuts led to an increase in employment rates, but only in the short run. Overall, the reform increased poverty rates and led to a rise in subsistence crime. Moreover, local demand conditions generate substantial heterogeneity in the reform’s effects on immediate and longer-term employment.

14 May 2024

American Economic Journal

Unintended Consequences of Welfare Cuts on Children and Adolescents

This paper studies the effects of a large welfare benefit reduction on the children in the affected families. The welfare cut targeted adult refugees who received residency in Denmark, and it reduced their disposable income by 30 percent on average over the first five years. We show that children exposed to the welfare cut during preschool and school-age obtained lower GPAs, experienced reduced wellbeing and overall education levels, and suffered lower employment and earnings as adults. Children in their teens at exposure faced large increases in conviction probabilities for violent and property crimes.

13 May 2024

American Economic Journal – Policy

Attendance Boundary Policies and the Limits to Combating School Segregation

What is the efficacy of redrawing school attendance boundaries as a desegregation policy? To provide causal evidence on this question, we employ novel data with unprecedented detail on the universe of Danish children and exploit changes in attendance boundaries over time. Households defy reassignments to schools with lower socioeconomic status. There is a strong social gradient in defiance, as resourceful households are more sensitive to the student composition of new schools. We simulate school assignment policies and find that boundary changes that reassign areas to a highly disadvantaged school are ineffective at altering the socioeconomic composition at the disadvantaged school.

3 February 2024

Social Science & Medicine

From unequal injuries to unequal learning? Socioeconomic gradients in childhood concussions and the impact on children’s academic performance

Highlights • Child concussion rates are higher among families with lower earnings and education. • Concussion incidence and reading test scores are negatively correlated. • Difference-in-differences model controls for selection and identifies a causal effect. • The negative correlation is driven by selection and does not reflect a causal effect. • Social gradients in concussions do not lead to inequality in academic performance.

30 December 2023

Psychological Medicine

Suicides, drug poisonings, and alcohol-related deaths cluster with health and social disadvantage in 4.1 million citizens from two nations

Deaths of despair are a marker of inequalities in countries beyond the U.S. with robust social-safety nets, nationwide healthcare, and strong pharmaceutical regulations. These deaths cluster within a highly disadvantaged population segment identifiable within health- and social-service systems.

3 November 2023

The journal of human resources

How Does Visitation Affect Incarcerated Persons and Their Families?

1 November 2023

European Psychiatry

Changes in anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the European population

26 October 2023

Labour Economics

Access to language training and the local integration of refugees

15 October 2023

Children and Youth Services Review

Introducing a New Data Resource for Comparative Child Welfare Research: The Rockwool-Duke Global Child Welfare Database

9 September 2023

The Journal of Economic Inequality

Income developments in the great recession Status for the Danish Prime-age Working Population a Decade Following the Onset of the Financial Crisis.”

8 September 2023

Demographic Research

Partial Fertility Recuperation in Spain Two Years After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

5 September 2023

Canadian Review of Sociology

Sources of mathematics self-efficacy: The interactive role of parental education and perceptions of teachers

3 September 2023

Acta Sociologica

Criminal justice involvement, transition to fatherhood, and the demographic foundation of the intergenerational transmission of crime

30 August 2023

Justice Quarterly

Court Delays and Criminal Recidivism: Results from Danish Administrative Data and a Policy Reform

11 August 2023

European Journal of Public Health

The association between type of conception through medically assisted reproduction and childhood cognition: A Danish population-wide cohort study

22 July 2023