Unwarranted Racial Disparity in U.S. Foster Care Placement

Black children in the U.S. are twice as likely as white children to spend time in foster care. Such racial disparities raise concerns of discrimination, but might also reflect differences in the underlying need for intervention. This paper estimates unwarranted disparities (UDs)—racial differences in placement rates for children with the same potential for future maltreatment—in national data. We use non-parametric bounds on the potential for future child maltreatment that rely on weak and transparent assumptions. Nationwide, we find that Black children are placed into foster care at higher rates than white children with identical potential to experience subsequent maltreatment; this UD is 42% larger than conventional estimates that control for observables. We demonstrate that UD varies across states and that both the proportion of Black individuals in the population and the racial makeup of caseworkers within a state are key factors in predicting the level of UD. Finally, we show that UD is five times larger among children with potential for subsequent maltreatment than among children without, and that it declined from 2008 to 2020, primarily due to a decline in the placement rate of Black children with potential for subsequent maltreatment. The concentration of UD in cases with potential for future maltreatment yields important policy implications, as it may indicate an "underplacement" of white children—with declining racial gaps over time potentially elevating the risk of maltreatment for Black children.