OBJECTIVES Poverty and low income are associated with increased risk for child maltreatment. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) are among the largest antipoverty programs in the United States. We estimated associations between income transfer payments via the EITC and CTC and child maltreatment reports in the period shortly after families receive payments from these programs. METHODS We linked weekly EITC and CTC refund data from the Internal Revenue Service to state-specific child maltreatment report data from 48 states and the District of Columbia during the 2015 through 2018 tax seasons (January - April). We leveraged the natural experiment of a legislated change in the timing of EITC and CTC transfer payments to low-income families and quasi-experimental methods to estimate the association between EITC and CTC payments and child maltreatment reports. RESULTS EITC and CTC payments were associated with lower state-level rates of child maltreatment reports. For each additional $1000 in per-child EITC and CTC tax refunds, state-level rates of reported child maltreatment declined in the week of and 4 weeks following refund payments by an overall estimated 5.0% (95% confidence interval = 2.3%-7.7%). CONCLUSIONS Federal income assistance programs are associated with immediate reductions in child maltreatment reporting. These results are particularly relevant at this time, as expansions to such programs continue to be discussed at the state and federal levels.

中文翻译：

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税收抵免对美国儿童虐待报告率的短期影响。

目标 贫困和低收入与虐待儿童的风险增加有关。收入所得税抵免 (EITC) 和儿童税收抵免 (CTC) 是美国最大的反贫困计划之一。我们估计了通过 EITC 和 CTC 进行的收入转移支付与家庭从这些计划收到付款后不久的儿童虐待报告之间的关联。方法 我们将来自美国国税局的每周 EITC 和 CTC 退款数据与 2015 年至 2018 年税收季节（1 月至 4 月）期间来自 48 个州和哥伦比亚特区的特定州虐待儿童报告数据联系起来。我们利用立法改变 EITC 和 CTC 向低收入家庭转移支付时间的自然实验和准实验方法来估计 EITC 和 CTC 支付与虐待儿童报告之间的关联。结果 EITC 和 CTC 支付与较低的州级虐待儿童报告率相关。每名儿童 EITC 和 CTC 退税每增加 1000 美元，州级报告的儿童虐待率在退款后的一周和 4 周内下降了 5.0%（95% 置信区间 = 2.3%-7.7%） ). 结论 联邦收入援助计划与虐待儿童报告的立即减少有关。这些结果在这个时候特别相关，