Unreported Victims of an Economic Downturn∗

I document that the recent Great Recession caused large decreases in referral rates for child maltreatment: areas most affected by the recession saw the largest decreases. This fits with some previous work that finds that poor economic conditions are associated with lower reported child maltreatment rates. I argue that this was due not to decreases in actual maltreatment rates, but rather large decreases in the reporting rates of child maltreatment, caused by the economic downturn. I use alternative proxies for actual maltreatment rates, less likely to be affected by reporting rates: rates of child mortality from neglect and Google searches suspecting maltreatment. The proxies comparatively increased in areas more affected by the recent recession. The estimates imply that the recent doubling of the unemployment rate increased actual child maltreatment incidents in the United States by 10.0 to 24.0 percent but decreased reported child maltreatment incidents by 12.7 percent. A likely explanation for the substantial decrease in reporting rates of maltreatment was depleted resources both for organizations likely to report cases and organizations likely to receive and investigate reports. ∗I thank Alberto Alesina, Raj Chetty, David Cutler, Ed Glaeser, and Lawrence Katz for helpful conversations. I thank Michael Dineen and Andres Arroyo of of the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect for help in data collection. All remaining errors are, of course, my own. 1