Economic Antecedents of Foster Care

Individual and ecological research suggests that rising unemployment may affect the incidence of violence through two countervailing mechanisms suggested by frustration–aggression theory. The first, or provocation effect, assumes increased violence among persons who feel anger because they believe t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of community psychology 2003-09, Vol.32 (1-2), p.47-56
Main Authors: Catalano, Ralph, Lind, Samuel, Rosenblatt, Abram, Novaco, Raymond
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abused children
Adult
California
California - epidemiology
Child
Child Abuse
Economic Factors
Economic hardship
Economics
Family Violence
Foster Care
Foster Children
Foster Home Care - economics
Foster Home Care - statistics & numerical data
Humans
Parents
Prevalence
Socioeconomic Factors
Time series
Unemployment
Unemployment - statistics & numerical data
USA
Violence
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Individual and ecological research suggests that rising unemployment may affect the incidence of violence through two countervailing mechanisms suggested by frustration–aggression theory. The first, or provocation effect, assumes increased violence among persons who feel anger because they believe their job loss was arbitrary. The second, or inhibition effect, posits less violence among employed persons who attempt to reduce their chances of job loss by curtailing behavior objectionable to employers. The literature also reports that these mechanisms affect victimization measured as foster care sought by the state for abused children. The foster care finding, although consistent with theory and important for basic as well as applied reasons, arises from methods that cannot rule out several rival hypotheses. We revisit this research and apply improved methods to test the reported association in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties. We find that, as implied by the provocation and inhibition mechanisms, differences in monthly prevalence of foster care placements increase with modest increases in unemployment but decline when unemployment becomes much higher than usual levels.
ISSN:0091-0562
1573-2770
DOI:10.1023/A:1025690722487