Abstract

Research on the relationship between parental incarceration and foster care placement is limited in three ways: (1) it focuses solely on maternal imprisonment and provides neither (2) strong causal tests nor (3) tests of mediation. In this article, we address these gaps by providing a rationale for how paternal imprisonment may increase children’s risk of foster care placement and by using Danish registry data to conduct a strong causal test of this relationship (using a recent policy change) and to test relevant mechanisms. The results provide compelling evidence of a causal effect of paternal imprisonment on children’s risk of foster care placement in Denmark and imply that changes in family finances and family structure do little to explain these effects.

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