Yale University Study: 1 in 8 Children in the United States Suffer Maltreatment

According to Yale University, child abuse occurs more often than the United States estimates. Approximately 12% of American children will suffer from neglect or physical, emotional, or sexual abuse before they turn 18 years old.

The research conducted at Yale University used the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System Child File (NCANDS) to arrive at their startling results. NCANDS is a federally sponsored national data collection of reports on child maltreatment. The study, "The Prevalence of Confirmed Maltreatment Among US Children, 2004 to 2011," was published on Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Determined to learn the rate at which child maltreatment occurs, the researchers examined 5,689,900 children over an eight-year period. The year 2011 saw the highest rates (12.5%) of such abuse, which the researchers say is a risk factor for poor health throughout the course of one's life. The highest rate of child maltreatment occurred amongst African Americans (20.9%) and the lowest occurred amongst Asian/Pacific Islanders (3.8%).

"Child maltreatment is common," said Christopher Wildeman, an associate professor of sociology at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in this Bloomberg Businessweek article. "It's unequally distributed and if we don't think about public policies that seek to diminish child maltreatment, we're not only leading ourselves to have a less healthy generation of children, we're also potentially allowing racial disparities in childhood maltreatment to grow."

Child maltreatment is associated with higher rates of obesity, mental health issues, and death. Treating those with obesity and mental health issues costs a total of $124 billion in the U.S. each year, comparable to those who are treated for stroke and diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year, over 3 million referrals of child maltreatment are received by state and local agencies, which is where the problem begins and must be mended.

The study finds fault with the country's status quo numbers on the child maltreatment issue, previously documented at 1 in 100 children. After a comprehensive analysis over a significant time period, the researchers arrived at 1 in 8 U.S. children.