Risk of Death Among Children Reported for Nonfatal Maltreatment

Abstract

This article presents analyses of longitudinal data to explore whether low-income children who survived a first incident of reported maltreatment were at higher risk of later childhood death compared to a matched comparison group of low-income children without reports of maltreatment (n = 7,433). Compared to the comparison group, children in the maltreatment group had about twice the risk of death before age 18 (0.51% vs. 0.27%). Among children with mal-treatment reports, median time from the first report to subsequent death was 9 months. The majority of deaths among children who were reported for maltreatment could be categorized as preventable (accidents or recurrent maltreatment) as compared to resulting from severe health conditions.