Can giving parents more money keep children out of foster care? 

Illinois has placed a big bet that the answer is yes. The state recently launched a project providing unconditional monthly checks — averaging $500 — to families who have abused or neglected their children. (Yes, you read that right. The cash is only available to parents who have already maltreated their children.) 

The research team behind this project is confident that the cash will work. The project comes on the heels of two extraordinary claims emanating from numerous prominent academics, think tanks and foundations: Child welfare agencies routinely confuse poverty for neglect, removing children from otherwise functional homes because of dirty laundry or a small apartment and that there is an abundance of high-quality research demonstrating that modest economic supports prevent the need for foster care. As University of Kansas professor Donna Ginther puts it: “If a state is more generous with (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, that protects kids from entering foster care.”

But is the research really this clear-cut? In a recent report with The American Enterprise Institute, we reviewed the evidence. 

Policymakers should be highly skeptical. 

The idea that poverty drives some portion of child welfare involvement seems reasonable. In many states, neglect is a broad category that includes failure to provide food, shelter or medical care. And at least 80% of families reported for maltreatment are low-income. Advocacy groups across the political spectrum have embraced the claim that this is “not a parent problem, it’s a poverty problem.” The Chicago-based nonprofit Prevent Child Abuse America argues that child abuse and neglect are “most often a lack of resource problem” and calls for “affordable housing for everyone” to prevent maltreatment. The conservative America First Policy Institute agrees that “most child removals stem from poverty or parenting differences” — a position embraced by progressive groups seeking to “abolish” the child welfare system alongside prisons.

But we have yet to see a single study showing that child welfare agencies investigate and remove children for reasons of poverty. Rather, studies show that substance use, mental illness and family violence drive child welfare involvement. 

How, then, are there so many research articles claiming that even small boosts in household resources substantially reduce child maltreatment and child welfare involvement? Some studies even assert that as little as a few hundred dollars a year could reduce maltreatment reports and foster care entries by up to 10%. 

The sheer volume of studies linking economic support to reduced child welfare involvement — and their publication in prestigious medical and public health journals — gives the impression of rigor and credibility. But peer review is not the quality filter many imagine. We found consistent flaws in study design and interpretation that appear to have gone either unnoticed or unchallenged. 

Many studies cited to advance arguments for cash examine employment-conditioned transfers, such as the refundable earned income tax credit. But most caregivers investigated for child abuse and neglect are not employed full time and may not earn enough to file taxes, let alone receive a sizable refund. Parents who are disconnected from the labor market may not spend additional income in the same ways — or to the same effect — as working parents. 

The most recent universal cash pilot — RxKids of Flint, Michigan — throws more cold water on the hope of an easy answer. RxKids provided $1,500 during pregnancy and $6,000 in the first year of life for all children born in Flint — one of the most impoverished cities in the U.S. A recently released evaluation found that recipients of the cash transfers were no less likely to have allegations of child maltreatment during the first six months of life — a high-risk period for neglect. 

RxKids findings follow other underwhelming results from a host of guaranteed income experiments. Given decades of evidence showing that drug addiction is a primary driver of child maltreatment and foster care entry for young children, the optimism surrounding cash and safety net solutions may have never been warranted. 

Even so, unconditional cash and other income-support programs remain the centerpiece of a broad philanthropic and legislative effort to move “upstream” to prevent maltreatment rather than investing in better public-sector responses to its victims. Influential charitable organizations — including the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Casey Family Programs and the Child Welfare League of America — have issued calls to expand safety net programs as a maltreatment prevention strategy. Within Our Reach — named for the eponymous report seeking to eliminate child maltreatment fatalities — pronounced, “We must elevate our voices in support of economic supports as a core component of an evidence-based prevention policy agenda.”

Part of the momentum behind expanding economic support likely comes from broader disappointment with other child maltreatment prevention strategies. Billions in federal investment in home visiting yielded no reductions in maltreatment. Intensive family preservation programs also have a weak track record for improving child safety. 

We need smarter investments in the far less glamorous, yet essential, work of ensuring often-resistant parents receive mental health and addiction treatment. Whether aimed at primary prevention or responding after child abuse or neglect has been alleged, economic supports fail to address the complex conditions that reproduce both chronic poverty and maltreatment.

Children’s safety requires confronting these challenges openly and directly — and targeting our prevention and intervention dollars accordingly.

Sarah Font is a professor of social work in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. Emily Putnam-Hornstein is the John A. Tate Distinguished Professor for Children in Need at the School of Social Work at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/01/02/opinion-illinois-child-welfare-foster-care-payments/