فقر، ضعف اجتماعی و تعیین شکاف سیاه/سفید

In this paper, we examine whether county-level measures of poverty and social disadvantage are correlated with county-level variation in the black/white foster care placement gap. The black/white placement gap refers to the fact that when the rate of placement into foster care for black children is compared to the rate for white children living in the same area, the black placement rate is almost always higher than the rate for whites. Although differential exposure to poverty is often used to explain why the placement gap is so large, the problem has rarely been studied. Using Poisson event count models, we find that poverty, measured at the county ecological level, is associated with a narrower gap rather than a wider gap. The counterintuitive finding is due to the fact that the relationship between poverty and placement rates depends on race.

In this paper, we examine whether county-level measures of poverty and social disadvantage are correlated with county-level variation in the black/white foster care placement gap. The black/white placement gap refers to the fact that when the rate of placement into foster care for black children is compared to the rate for white children living in the same area, the black placement rate is almost always higher than the rate for whites. Evidence suggests that the gap is quite large, with black children entering placement at an average rate that is 2.7 times greater than the average rate for whites (Wulczyn & Lery, 2007). More often than not, the gap is attributed to the differing needs of black children and families, differing treatment of black children within the child welfare system, policy differences, or some combination of the three explanations (Fluke et al., 2010 and Smedley et al., 2003). That said, there have been surprisingly few systematic attempts to describe the black/white placement gap and its correlates.