Bias, risk, racism: Reconciling critical and quantitative approaches to understanding racial inequality in child welfare system outcomes

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Edwards, Frank
• 署名单位: Rutgers University System; Rutgers University Newark
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1520-6830
• DOI: 10.1002/pam.70001
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 693-706
• 关键词: historical-trauma; SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION; impacts; FRAMEWORK; POLITICS; VIOLENCE; poverty; RACE

摘要

In this essay, I seek to reconcile critical and econometric approaches to diagnosing the causes of deep racial inequalities in child welfare system outcomes. Using a series of causal diagrams and critical engagement with the counterfactual causal model, I suggest policy analysts embrace a theoretical framework for quantitative inference that recognizes the complex ways that racism impacts families, places, and policy systems. Common approaches that partition inequalities into risk and bias components normatively imply that some inequalities are legitimate and some illegitimate. As we push toward foundational reform in how policy systems work with children and families, we must embrace analytic approaches that 1) map more convincingly onto real-world processes and 2) take questions of equity and harm as central ethical concerns.