Black–White differences in Child Protective Services involvement: Evidence on the role of differential ‘risk’

Black children and families are overrepresented in U.S. Child Protective Services (CPS) systems—the state and county systems responsible for receiving and responding to allegations of child maltreatment—relative to their representation in the U.S. population. They experience higher rates of CPS reports, investigations, substantiations, and child removals than White children (Children's Bureau, 2023, 2024; Edwards et al., 2021) and, conditional on out-of-home placement, spend more time in out-of-home care (Wulczyn, 2020). Moreover, while Black–White differences in CPS involvement have declined substantially over the past 2 decades (Myers et al., 2018; Roehrkasse, 2021; Wulczyn et al., 2023), they remain large: Black children are roughly twice as likely as White children to experience investigations, substantiations, and out-of-home placements over the course of childhood (Kim et al., 2017; Wildeman & Emanuel, 2014; Wildeman et al., 2014; Yi et al., 2023). Native American/American Indian children and families are also overrepresented at all levels of CPS involvement.1 Yet, because true underlying rates of child maltreatment are unknown, research has not established whether these disparities reflect disproportionate rates of maltreatment and, if not, whether they reflect under- or over-inclusion of either group. It is, perhaps, unsurprising to observe disparities in CPS involvement, especially between Black and White populations. Black–White disparities are well documented for most indicators of health and social and economic wellbeing in the U.S., including income, poverty, wealth, employment, educational achievement and attainment, teen and nonmarital childbirth, family complexity and instability, morbidity and mortality, maternal and infant mortality, neighborhood quality, exposure to violence, and criminal justice involvement (Dagher & Linares, 2022; Darity & Mullen, 2022; Darity et al., 2022; Drake et al., 2023; National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2019; Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2022; Rothstein, 2017). Of particular note, poverty rates for Black children are more than 3 times those for White children (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). These disparities stem from historical and contemporary structural and institutional racism, oppression, and discrimination that have pervaded both public policy and social structure in the United States, and have manifested in bias against (differential treatment of or impact on) Black populations, relative to White populations (Darity & Mullen, 2022; Darity et al., 2022; Rothstein, 2017). As a result, compared to their White counterparts, Black populations have a higher likelihood of exposure to inferior educational experiences; segregated and poor-quality housing; poor schools, childcare facilities, and neighborhoods; and environmental toxins, limited and low-quality health and mental health services, violence, police surveillance, and voter suppression policies (Braveman et al., 2022; Yearby et al., 2022). These factors have, in turn, generated widespread concern among scholars, policymakers, advocates, and, in some cases, the public. Adverse trajectories and outcomes in these domains are associated with both child maltreatment and CPS involvement (Font & Maguire-Jack, 2020). Moreover, research has documented a strong inverse relation of income with child maltreatment and CPS involvement (Berger & Waldfogel, 2011; Font & Maguire-Jack, 2020), and most CPS-involved families are low income or poor (Berger & Slack, 2020). Such Black–White disparities have resulted in Black populations being overrepresented in public systems, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; Medicaid; Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program; Head Start and Early Head Start programs; Early Intervention Program; Supplemental Security Income program; and Child Support program. Black populations are also highly overrepresented in the criminal justice system. Whereas racial disparities in the factors driving disproportionate involvement in these systems have generated grave concern, disproportionate involvement in them—with the notable exceptions of the criminal justice system (e.g., Blumstein, 2014; Du, 2021; Roberts, 2007), child protective services (e.g., Dettlaff et al., 2020; Roberts, 2022), and, to a lesser extent, the child support system (Edin et al., 2019)—has not, itself, been widely raised as problematic, nor led to widespread calls to dismantle, disrupt, or abolish them (though many engender ongoing debate over their costs and benefits, and calls for reform). Why, then, might disproportionality in CPS involvement be viewed as prima facie evidence of bias and discrimination toward Black families by CPS systems, while disproportionate involvement in most other social systems is not widely viewed as evidence of bias or discrimination by those systems? We posit that, rather than reflecting concern over disproportionality itself, this reflects concern over the orientation and (perceived or actual) impact of CPS. That is, much like the criminal justice system, CPS is frequently viewed as punitive. Indeed, CPS has been described as a family policing and family surveillance system (Dettlaff et al., 2020; Roberts, 2022). In contrast, most other social welfare systems—despite criticism of aspects thereof—are generally viewed as compensatory (at least in their purpose) attempts to address prior and ongoing sources and impacts of disadvantage and marginalization. As such, we argue that whether one views disproportionality in CPS involvement—itself—as driven by problematic CPS-specific, or society-wide, biases depends largely upon whether one views CPS as punitive or compensatory; in other words, whether one views it as helping or harming (in the sense of assisting or punishing) children and families. Racially disproportionate system involvement is appropriate and productive when it compensates for prior and ongoing marginalization, oppression, disadvantage, and sources thereof; it is inappropriate and unproductive when it increases marginalization, oppression, and disadvantage, or otherwise harms involved populations. Thus, knowledge of both whether disparities in CPS involvement are consistent with disparities in actual child maltreatment, and whether CPS is punitive or compensatory, is essential to understanding and addressing them. Scholars, policymakers, advocates, CPS involved children and families, and citizens vary in their assessments of both factors. We acknowledge that the child welfare literature entails arguments on both sides: that CPS is helpful or harmful to children and families. However, the most rigorous estimates of causal effects of CPS involvement (predominantly out-of-home placement) have produced inconsistent estimates in terms of direction, magnitude, and statistical significance (Bald et al., 2022; Berger et al., 2017; Doyle, 2007, 2008, 2013; Font et al., 2018, 2019, 2021; Grimon, 2023; Gross & Baron, 2022). As such, we view the evidence on whether CPS helps or harms children, on the whole, as inconclusive. Moreover, we suspect that CPS involvement has heterogenous effects on short- and long-term child safety and wellbeing that vary considerably by child and family circumstances, behaviors, and functioning, as well as by the levels of CPS involvement (investigation, substantiation, case opening, service receipt, child removal) children and families experience, their length of involvement, the types and quality of services they receive, how well those services meet their needs, their engagement in them, and the features of the local child welfare system itself. Notably, however, quantitative research has focused almost exclusively on the impacts of CPS involvement on children. We are aware of only one rigorous study to estimate plausibly causal effects on parental wellbeing. Grimon (2023) found CPS involvement to increase maternal participation in mental health and substance abuse treatment and decrease short-term CPS re-referrals, but also that out-of-home placement increases maternal incarceration in the short term and CPS re-referrals in the long term. She found little evidence that CPS involvement affects fathers in these domains, with the exception of decreasing re-referrals. Whereas rigorous quantitative evidence has not conclusively determined whether CPS helps or harms children and families, a growing body of rigorous qualitative evidence indicates that parents perceive CPS as causing harm to them and their children, families, and communities through adversarial, stigmatizing, and traumatizing interactions, and by engaging in racist, discriminatory, and biased practices (Fong, 2020, 2023; Hanna & Rogers, 2022; Merritt, 2020, 2021; Miller et al., 2012; Roberts, 2022). The rich data collected in these studies provide unique insights into families’ lived experiences and highlight crucial failings in how CPS approaches, engages, and serves them, underscoring the need for system reorientation. They also raise salient concerns about potential bias within CPS. Yet, despite the contributions of qualitative studies to our understanding of the experiences of child welfare involved families, they do not, themselves, provide insight into whether CPS involvement causally impacts child safety or child and family wellbeing, nor whether bias within CPS causes racial disparities in CPS involvement. This simply reflects that identifying causal effects requires counterfactual conditions that facilitate rigorous comparison of outcomes between CPS-involved and non-involved families, or between CPS-involved Black and White families, and analytic strategies that allow the effects of CPS involvement or racial bias in CPS actions to be isolated from all other influencing factors. Such approaches are not relevant to qualitative inquiry. In the remainder of this essay, we review the dominant hypotheses regarding the causes of Black–White disparities in CPS involvement and the quantitative evidence with respect to each. Throughout, we draw heavily on our recent work (Jones Harden & Berger, 2025), which provides a more extensive review of these issues. We argue that the evidence that differential risk is a key contributor to Black–White differences in CPS involvement is substantial, but that this does not discount the roles of racism and bias, either within or outside of CPS. That is, we find no compelling reason not to expect (or suspect) that both risk and bias contribute to racial disparities in CPS involvement at each level thereof. Moreover, we view differential risk as a direct result of differential historical and contemporary constraints, opportunities, experiences, and outcomes for Black and White populations. Given that CPS systems operate within the larger U.S. social structure, we assume that, at the very least, the same patterns of racism, discrimination, and bias operate within CPS as in other aspects of U.S. society. The core drivers of racial disparities in CPS involvement in the U.S. are hypothesized to be differences in surveillance and racialized surveillance bias by potential reporters; racism and racial bias within CPS; racial disparities in risk for child maltreatment; and structural racism, discrimination, and bias at the societal level. We briefly summarize the evidence vis-à-vis each below. We emphasize that they need not be seen as competing or alternative hypotheses. Rather, they provide complementary insights into how various mechanisms may influence racial disparities at each stage of CPS involvement. There are strong theoretical reasons to expect that greater surveillance of Black and, more generally, low-income communities, is a core driver of racial disparities in CPS involvement (Boyd, 2014, 2022; Dettlaff & Boyd, 2022; Fong, 2019), particularly at the report stage. Research has shown that these communities experience disproportionate surveillance by law enforcement (Boyles, 2015; Braga et al., 2019; Brunson & Gau, 2014), which accounts for about 20% of CPS reports (Children's Bureau, 2024). Black and low-income young children are also more likely to be referred to CPS by medical personnel (Edwards et al., 2023), which account for approximately 11% of CPS referrals (Children's Bureau, 2024). Disproportionate participation by Black families in social welfare benefit programs and social services may also be salient. Yet, because contemporary social welfare benefit programs rarely require in-person enrollment, assessment, or home visits, it is unlikely that benefit receipt substantially increases surveillance. Social service participation, including home visiting and early childhood education and care programs and, perhaps, public healthcare coverage and utilization, may increase exposure to mandated reporters. Social service and mental health providers jointly account for about 16% of reports and medical providers for about 11% (Children's Bureau, 2024). However, considerable evidence indicates that disparate surveillance (exposure to mandated reporters) by race explains only a small portion of racial disparities in CPS involvement (Chaffin & Bard, 2006; Drake et al., 2009, 2017; Jonson-Reid et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2018). Of additional concern, potential reporters may, all else equal, be more likely to report Black families than White families. Research has been unable to rigorously test this possibility (Harris, 2021). On the whole, then, whereas greater surveillance of Black and low-income families may play some role in racial disparities in CPS involvement, it is unlikely a driving factor. At the same time, there is little evidence on differences in decisions to report Black and White families, conditional on exposure to reporters and identical observed behaviors. A second hypothesis posits that racism, bias, and discrimination within CPS primarily drives racial disparities therein. Rigorous quantitative research, here, is also limited. However, racial disparities are largest at the report stage, which occurs outside of CPS, and are mitigated rather than exacerbated at deeper levels of involvement, which occur within CPS (Baron et al., 2023; Drake et al., 2023, 2024; Myers et al., 2018). These findings suggest that CPS actions are not driving and may help allay Black–White disparities.2 Several studies have shed additional light on the potential role of racism and bias within CPS in screen-in (investigation), substantiation, and child removal decisions. For example, research comparing whether CPS decisions to investigate reports in the context of artificial intelligence-generated risk scores, which are intended to inform screen-in decisions, has indicated that caseworker decisions to open an investigation result in lesser racial disparities than differential risk scores would suggest (Cheng et al., 2022; Stapleton et al., 2022), implying that CPS actions may reduce racial disparities in investigations relative to reports. Turning to substantiations, Font et al. (2012), using national data, found no differences in substantiation decisions (or caseworker ratings of risk or harm to the alleged victim) for Black and White families, net of case characteristics and maltreatment-related risk. Further, they found that Black caseworkers are more likely than White caseworkers to substantiate Black families, relative to White families, as well as to rate Black alleged victims as experiencing greater risk of harm than White alleged victims, suggesting that racial disparities in CPS actions do not reflect biased actions by White caseworkers toward Black families. In contrast, Dettlaff et al. (2011), using CPS administrative data from Texas from 2003 to 2005, found no difference in substantiation rates between Black and White families when adjusting only for sociodemographic and case but found that Black families are more likely to be caseworker assessments of family risk are also study not caseworker particularly rigorous studies the potential role of racial bias in child and (2023) administrative data from and a to the impact of child removal that the responsible for removal decisions is of the and found no impact on racial disparities in and also using a and administrative data from found higher removal rates for Black than White children, particularly among those at risk of maltreatment, and that this reflects racial bias in of White children at risk of maltreatment rather than of Black children. In we find little compelling evidence that CPS investigation decisions racial and some evidence that they may reduce The limited quantitative evidence on substantiation decisions has produced findings but at the very least, that Black–White substantiation disparities are not driven by disproportionate decisions to substantiate Black families by White nor by differences between Black and White caseworkers in decisions to substantiate White families. The evidence on child removals is also both that removal decisions have no impact on racial disparities in removals and that White children in the most are likely to be than Black children in the most these findings suggest that bias within CPS is unlikely a driver of racial disparities investigations and It is that this is the case for child removals if if out-of-home placement serves to increase safety for children at risk of abuse or racial disparities in CPS child removal decisions may be Black children than White children. A hypothesis that disparities in CPS involvement are driven by disparities in risk for abuse and This is, perhaps, the most hypothesis to that risk factors are more observed than bias and discrimination, which are frequently by the difference by race in an that is by observed factors it is to the of Black–White differences to their for observed risk and to whether they are or the differential reflecting including bias and As research has documented racial White a of risk factors for child maltreatment, including low-income and poverty Moreover, a growing body of research, et al., and (Berger et al., 2017; et al., 2023; 2023; Wildeman & has a causal of income on both CPS involvement and child maltreatment including parental and and child is to a of and structural factors that have resulted from historical and contemporary racism and and are associated with maltreatment risk et al., 2023). That is, factors as parental health and mental health substance abuse family and neighborhood violence, criminal justice involvement, and practices and are among low-income and poor families 2013; & They have also been found to largely Black–White differences in CPS involvement and actions et al., 2022; et al., Drake et al., 2011; Jonson-Reid et al., 2009; & 2022; et al., 2022; et al., 2012; et al., In other words, for factors substantially the of Black–White disparities in CPS involvement and actions and, in some cases, or them et al., 2023, 2024; Jonson-Reid et al., 2009; et al., 2022). A concern is that low-income and poverty and associated maltreatment-related risk to Black–White disparities in CPS involvement or actions because reporters or caseworkers economic with child maltreatment, particularly child We are of research to this possibility for mandated or reporters. However, CPS a of than in (Children's Bureau, the to for there is no evidence on the of that are to their allegations reflecting poverty it is that this may reflect of families at low risk of maltreatment and, perhaps, primarily with economic it that CPS systems to investigate many have indicated that economic for potential abuse or is unlikely a widespread within CPS et al., 2024; Bureau, 2024). the data are that families from low-income the of those involved with CPS (Berger & Slack, 2020; of all families and by only or or (Children's Bureau, 2024). In a study of investigations in indicated that the of for of and for substance mental health allegations of parental or et al., 2024). On the whole, the evidence indicates that Black families are more likely than White families to be low-income and that mental parental substance and are among low-income and poor populations 2013; & that these factors are to child abuse and et al., and that they are among the of CPS involved families (Children's Bureau, 2024; et al., 2024). disparities by income and race in of maltreatment-related are in to disparities by income and race in CPS involvement et al., 2019; et al., et al., & Waldfogel, 2022; et al., 2023). respect to the no study of which we are aware has established whether structural racism, discrimination, and bias at the societal level racial disparities in CPS involvement and This reflects that research and are to potential effects (Boyd, 2022). we no for the role of these factors. Rather, we posit that historical and contemporary structural racism, bias, and discrimination in U.S. including policies and have resulted in racial disparities in income, poverty, and associated risk factors for child These in turn, largely account for Black–White at all levels of CPS involvement. We this as that racial disparities in CPS involvement and actions are driven by society-wide, rather than CPS-specific, patterns of structural racism, bias, and discrimination, which have resulted in Black–White differences in maltreatment-related risk that the mechanisms through which Black–White disproportionality in CPS involvement of the research literature to for public Black–White disparities in CPS involvement reflect underlying differences in maltreatment risk that are driven by factors outside of CPS, it is unlikely that CPS differential actions by which may Black substantially reduce Black–White disparities in CPS involvement and Rather, the for CPS is to both and the of CPS-involved children and families and the it helps rather than harms children and families. This require system to that CPS is a and with which to safety and their wellbeing. this CPS provide that and families, and that and benefit them. This and as well as to facilitate children in and It also require public to of and to substance mental violence, and other services to the of parents and children, as well as in of CPS Given historical of CPS, and system and constraints, is likely to be than CPS substantially racial disparities in CPS involvement require outside of CPS not a more income as a Child have the potential to substantially reduce child maltreatment, CPS involvement, and racial disparities et al., 2023). Income are to and have effects and, while their long-term societal their costs et al., 2022). economic likely reduce maltreatment among the families rather than those at most risk of substantiation and child the of families are CPS involved both families from an investigation and CPS to be on the risk families. income maltreatment, CPS involvement, and disparities require public to that substance mental violence, and programs and services are widely and families CPS Notably, programs are and by limited and However, their long-term are likely to their In there is no or for child maltreatment, CPS involvement, and racial disparities therein. require extensive public and and both within CPS systems and, them. This from our report to the and Child do we (Jones Harden & Berger, We are to the for support for that work and to for and Berger is and of Social of Social and for Research in the Social at of for Research on Social Harden is of of Child and at of Social