A Quantitative Study of 21st Century Performance of Foster Care in the United States
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Roughly 10% of US foster children leave foster care without any permanent family or home, which is known to sharply increase a person’s likelihood for unemployment, homelessness, and incarceration. There are three positive, permanent exit avenues from foster care: reunifying with one’s initial family, adoption by a new caretaker; or entering the guardianship of another caretaker, usually a relative of the child. We study how a set of geographic and non-geographic variables relate to the likelihood of exiting foster care through a competing risks analysis on 2543790 foster children from 2000-2014 in 49 states (excluding New York for data validity issues). Geographic variables were a set of clustered control variables, and a state fixed effect variable for each state. Since each state writes their own foster care policy, the fixed effects are used to understand the effectiveness of policies across states. Neighboring states were found to have dramatically different exit likelihoods. For non-geographic variables, race, age, placement stability, reason for removal, and prior removal history all had varying relations to likelihood of exiting, depending on the variant of exit. Clinical disabilities decreased likelihoods of all exits. The foster population, relative to the adult population within a state, decreased the likelihood of adoption. A model made at the end of the paper shows the potential benefits for children needing to be adopted if barriers to interstate adoption were reduced or abolished.
Description
Type of resource | text |
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Date created | May 2017 |
Creators/Contributors
Author | Gehami, Albert | |
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Primary advisor | David, Paul A | |
Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Economics |
Subjects
Subject | Stanford Department of Economics |
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Subject | America |
Subject | US |
Subject | Foster Children |
Subject | Cox |
Subject | Hazard Model |
Subject | Competing Hazard |
Subject | Map |
Subject | Adopted |
Subject | Reunification |
Subject | Guardian |
Subject | Foster |
Subject | Aged Out |
Subject | Fostering |
Subject | Exiting Care |
Subject | Neglect |
Subject | Child |
Subject | Abuse |
Subject | Physical Abuse |
Subject | Sexual Abuse |
Subject | AFCARS |
Subject | NDCAN |
Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Gehami, Albert. (2017). A Quantitative Study of 21st Century Performance of Foster Care in the United States. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/mf814px6147
Collection
Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses
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