State-Level COVID-19 Eviction Moratoria May Have Helped Reduce Risk of Child Maltreatment

A recent article published in Pediatrics, “State-Based Eviction Moratoria and Child Maltreatment During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” examines whether state-level eviction moratoria implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with changes in reported child maltreatment rates. The authors found that in the states studied, eviction moratoria were significantly associated with reduced biweekly reporting of physical abuse (16% reduction), sexual abuse (21%), and child neglect (12%) during the study period (January 1, 2019, to mid-August 2021). These findings suggest that eviction moratoria may help to prevent child maltreatment by promoting housing stability.  

Previous studies have shown that housing insecurity and eviction increase the risk of child maltreatment and of Child Protective Services (CPS) investigations. The authors note that in most states, “a family’s failure to provide secure housing” is considered child neglect, despite the fact that housing insecurity often reflects “structural adversities beyond a family’s control.” In 2022, 11% of child removals through the child welfare system were associated with inadequate housing. A rapidly growing body of evidence demonstrates that providing housing-insecure families with financial assistance and/or increasing tenant protections can not only promote housing insecurity but help to improve child and family wellbeing outcomes and safeguard families’ material needs. The authors sought to leverage geographic variations in the implementation of state-level eviction moratoria during the pandemic to understand if eviction moratoria were associated with changes in reported child maltreatment rates. 

The authors linked data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), the COVID-19 Eviction Moratoria and Housing Policy Database (EMHPD), and Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering COVID-19 time series data to compare changes in average biweekly maltreatment reporting rates before and during the pandemic between counties in states with and without eviction moratoria. They defined their “treatment” group as 185 counties located in states with continuous eviction moratoria in effect from mid-March 2020 to mid-August of 2021 (California, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Washington, and the District of Columbia). The control group included 133 counties in states that never implemented a state-level eviction moratorium (Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Wyoming). 

The authors found that eviction moratoria were significantly associated with a reduction in biweekly reports of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. Though moratoria were also negatively associated with overall child maltreatment report rates, this association was not statistically significant. The statistical model suggests that the moratoria were associated with a decline in average reporting rates of 16% for physical abuse, 21% for sexual abuse, and 12% for neglect. 

The study findings suggest that policies to promote housing security such as eviction moratoria, direct cash assistance, and rental assistance may effectively reduce the risk of child maltreatment. However, the authors emphasize that the limitations of the study may have skewed the findings. For one, reported child maltreatment rates provide an incomplete picture of reality as not all cases of maltreatment are reported; they specifically call attention to the implications of varying school instructional modes (in-person, hybrid, fully remote) during the pandemic on the frequency of child maltreatment detection and reporting. Furthermore, the analysis did not account for other COVID-19 related federal, state, and local policies that may have had a positive effect on child maltreatment risk, such as unemployment insurance and an expanded child tax credit. 

This article can be found at:  https://bit.ly/4ijOSt1