Children who have experienced abuse or neglect are likely to experience many challenges as adults. These challenges include:
higher rates of unemployment and poverty in adulthood.
physical and mental health challenges in adulthood.
significantly higher use of social services than people without a history of childhood maltreatment.
Overall, adults who had experienced any type of maltreatment in childhood were twice as likely as non-victims to be unemployed. In terms of income, adults who had been physically abused as children were 60 percent more likely than non-victims to be living in poverty. The incidence rose to 180 percent for those who had experienced more than one type of childhood maltreatment.
Maltreatment was also linked to lower rates of health care coverage and greater use of social services such as Medicaid, especially among adults who had experienced childhood sexual abuse.
In the first comprehensive study of the long-term socioeconomic effects of abuse and neglect, Zielinski shows that childhood maltreatment carries significant costs to the individual and to society. Not only does the public share the burden in supporting maltreatment-related social services—such as child welfare services—but also those related to unemployment insurance, poverty-based public assistance, and publicly funded health insurance, such as Medicaid. Other societal impacts include the loss in employment productivity and tax revenues, from federal and state income taxes as well as state and local sales taxes.
Additional research has found that parents who were maltreated as children are more likely to abuse and neglect their own children than those without a history of maltreatment. Targeted assistance for maltreatment victims may help break this cycle.
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