CDC: Cost of Child Abuse and Neglect Rival Other Major Public Health Problems

NOTE: When are we going to wake up and realize the lack of intervention by way of family courts are a BIG contributor to these stats? T he research on the last 24 years of current family court system in Massachusetts since the Gender Bias Study of Massachusetts Courts in 1990 has not changed much at all if any.

The United States spends over one trillion dollars on health care, crime and economic loss annually as a result of domestic violence.

The statistical information, data and numbers can not be ignored. Read the stats here.

We think we have a health care and economic problem now? Unless something is done about how family courts render custody to abusers, the economic toll to the tax payer will be devastating. It is time to stop ignoring the issues victims of abuse face every day and start becoming a part of the solution. Whether we realize it or not, by ignoring the problem directly impact our children, our families, our communities and our wallets. 

CDC:  Injury Center: Violence Prevention : Cost of Child Abuse and Neglect Rival Other Major Public Health Problems

Child maltreatment is a serious and prevalent public health problem in the United States. In fiscal year 2008, U.S. state and local child protective services (CPS) received more than 3 million reports of children being abused or neglected—or about 6 complaints per minute, every day. An estimated 772,000 children were classified by CPS authorities as being maltreated and 1,740 children aged 0 to 17 died from abuse and neglect in 2008.

The financial costs for victims and society are substantial. A recent CDC study, The Economic Burden of Child Maltreatment in the United States and Implications for Prevention, found the total lifetime estimated financial costs associated with just one year of confirmed cases of child maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect) is approximately $124 billion.

Published in Child Abuse and Neglect, The International Journal, the study looked at confirmed child maltreatment cases—1,740 fatal and 579,000 non-fatal—for a 12-month period. Findings show each death due to child maltreatment had a lifetime cost of about $1.3 million, almost all of it in money that the child would have earned over a lifetime if he or she had lived. The lifetime cost for each victim of child maltreatment who lived was $210,012, which is comparable to other costly health conditions such as stroke with a lifetime cost per person estimated at $159,846 or type 2 diabetes, which is estimated between $181,000 and $253,000.

A promising array of prevention and response programs have great potential to reduce child maltreatment. Given the substantial economic burden of child maltreatment, the benefits of prevention will likely outweigh the costs for effective programs.

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/childmaltreatment/economiccost.html