Poverty isn’t neglect, and money isn’t always the answer

“I think about the families separated in Missouri over the years, not because of abuse or neglect, but because they could not afford to pay a bill or new clothes for their kids.” 

That was House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) last month, announcing the Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act. 

This idea that children are removed from their homes and placed in the foster care system because their parents can’t afford new clothes for them is a serious accusation. If true, it should outrage all Americans.

Fortunately, it’s not true.

The claim that children are separated from their parents when they are in no real danger but simply lack of material resources is repeated often. Advocates argue that alhough these cases are classified as “neglect,” they are actually just cases of poverty. 

The New York State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, for instance, released a report in May that characterizes “neglect cases” as substantially distinct from those in which children could face “serious abuse” or are “suffering the risk of serious harm.”

The poor are indeed overrepresented in the child welfare system. It is also true that conditions in a home and the appearance of a child are often cited in child welfare investigations. Caseworkers may note that a home lacks food, heat or running water, or that vermin are present. Teachers may report that a child has been showing up at school without having bathed or in dirty or insufficient clothing. Although poverty can make it more difficult to provide for a child, it is far from clear that the root cause of these scenarios is a lack of material resources, or that more resources alone would solve the problem.

A February study of 295 case files in California, for instance, found that 99 percent of physical neglect investigations “included concerns related to substance use, domestic violence, mental illness, co-reported abuse or an additional neglect allegation (i.e., abandonment).” 

In other words, “neglect” is much more than material deprivation. And the prevalence of poverty among households where there is suspicion of neglect cannot, by itself, tell us whether neglect is simply a by-product of poverty. 

Studies have found that up to 90 percent of child welfare cases involve families affected by substance-use disorders. Mental health challenges and drug addiction may cause parents to become poor because they cannot hold down a job or keep an apartment, and to mistreat their children by neglecting to feed them, pay electric bills, seek medical attention or ask for assistance with any of these things.

Malnutrition, lack of basic utilities and poor hygiene can be dangerous for children — particularly young children. Indeed, neglect is responsible for the vast majority of the maltreatment deaths in this country.

The American public seems to understand that neglect is about more than just poverty. A nationally representative poll conducted by the Bipartisan Policy Center last year found that, when asked about the primary cause of neglect, 10 percent of Americans pointed to lack of financial resources, and 3 percent cited lack of access to affordable housing, whereas 69 percent attributed the cause to parents abusing drugs or alcohol.

Nearly 600,000 cases of suspected abuse or neglect were substantiated in 2022 — a year in which the poverty rate for the nation’s approximately 72.5 million minors was 16.3 percent. This means that more than 94 percent of U.S. children in poverty were not the subject of a substantiated claim of abuse or neglect in 2022, even if one assumes that each of the substantiated cases involved a separate child. 

What distinguished families who merely live in poverty from those who are found to have neglected their children? The answer seems to be the incapacity of parents as a result of drugs or mental illness.

The danger in assuming that poverty is just being confused for neglect is not only that our legislators will make wild accusations against child welfare professionals taking children away just because their parents are struggling to make ends meet. It is also that our approach to helping children and families will be misguided.

The New York State Advisory Committee, for instance, recommends the establishment of a universal basic income as a way to reduce reports of child neglect. And there is a privately-funded pilot program underway in Washington D.C. to give families who are involved with the child welfare system $500 per month.

But if parents who are reported for neglect are suffering from substance use disorders or untreated mental illness, cash payments will not help and indeed might make things worse. 

Evidence from the recent large controlled trial of guaranteed income found evidence for concern. Among those who received the extra income, there was a small but statistically significant increase in the number of days per month that alcohol was consumed.

There were no analyses mentioned of groups who already had alcohol or drug problems before receiving additional money, but experience suggests the results would not be positive.

Naomi Schaefer Riley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she focuses on issues related to child welfare.