Child welfare inequalities in an egalitarian nation: A Norwegian cohort study

• Child welfare intervention rates in Norway are highly contingent on socioeconomic status. • The social gradient is strongest for children with Norwegian-born parents. • For children with non-Western immigrant parents, the social gradient is considerably weaker. • Living in a single-parent household increases intervention risk across all socioeconomic groups. • Intersectional frameworks are key to understanding child welfare inequalities. Child welfare systems internationally exhibit marked sociodemographic inequalities in intervention and out-of-home care rates. This study investigates these inequalities in Norway, focusing on the intersections of socioeconomic status (SES), ethnic background, and household composition. Using individual-level administrative data, the 2005 birth cohort was linked to parental sociodemographic data and child welfare records from birth to age 13 (2005–2018). By age 13, 10.9% of children experienced at least one child welfare intervention and 2.2% of children were placed in out-of-home care. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to predict the cumulative probabilities of child welfare intervention and out-of-home placement by age 13. At the intersection of SES and ethnic background, the strongest social gradient was observed for children with Norwegian-born parents: by age 13, 29.6% of children with low-SES Norwegian-born parents had received an intervention, compared to 7.3% of children with middle-SES and 3.2% of children with high-SES parents. In contrast, the weakest social gradient was observed among children with two non-Western immigrant parents, with 22.3% of low SES, 20.9% of middle SES, and 16.2% of high SES children receiving an intervention. At the intersection of SES and household composition, low SES and time spent in a single-parent household increased the risk for intervention in an additive manner: 57.6% of children from low-SES, long-term single-parent households experienced at least one child welfare intervention by age 13, compared to only 1.9% of children from high-SES two-parent households. These findings highlight the importance of a quantitative, intersectional framework for understanding child welfare inequalities.