Additional income support buffers the demand for child protection services at the municipality level

Abstract

This study explored in the Finnish context whether additional income support for economically insecure households reduces the demand for child protection services at the municipality level. The data were retrieved from the Official Statistics of Finland from 294 municipalities in 2017–2019. Mediation and moderation analyses were used for testing the hypotheses. According to the results, household economic insecurity was associated with the demand for child protection services. The more economically insecure households there were in a municipality, the greater the demand for child protection services. On the other hand, additional income support has a buffering effect between household economic insecurity and the demand for child protection services. However, the effect of additional income support depends on the proportion of economically insecure households in a municipality. The degree of buffering effect was increasing when the proportion of household economic insecurity was also increasing.