PII S0145-2134(98)00096-9 INFANTS ENTERING FOSTER CARE COMPARED TO OTHER INFANTS USING BIRTH STATUS INDICATORS BARBARA NEEDELL AND RICHARD P. BARTH University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA ABSTRACT Objective: Infants comprise nearly one fourth of all entries to foster care. Linkage of administrative birth and placement data can provide information about these infants that may otherwise be unavailable or difficult to obtain. Method: Statewide birth records and foster care placement histories were linked via probability matching. Logit regression was used to compare 26,460 maltreated infants who entered foster care between 1989 and 1994 with a random sample of 68,401 other infants born during that time frame. Results: Infants in care were more than twice as likely to have single parents and be born with low birthweight, and twice as likely to have been born with a birth abnormality as other infants, controlling for other factors. The largest difference was in the eightfold increased likelihood for mothers of infants in care to have had no prenatal care. Infants in care were nearly three times as likely to be born into larger families (third or greater live births to the mother). Mothers of infants in care were more than twice as likely to be African American compared to White than mothers of other infants, while Hispanic and Other ethnic groups were underrepresented in the group of infants in care. Foreign born mothers, especially Hispanic women, were much less likely to have infants in care than they were to have children in the other group. Conclusions: Administrative datasets, while often limited in the number of variables they include and scope of their information, can be a valuable tool when used to understand demographics and frame questions for future research. Infants who enter foster care differ in substantial ways from other children. These findings have important implications for future research aimed toward targeting of child welfare services and supports. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Key Words—Infants, Foster care, Birth status. THE NUMBER OF U.S. children in out-of-home care— kinship care, family foster care, or group home care—swelled from 270,000 in 1984 to an estimated 462,000 in 1994 (Curtis, Boyd, Liepold, & Petit, 1995) and this increase is largely a reflection of the influx of drug-exposed infants into the child welfare system (General Accounting Office, 1994; Murphy et al., 1991). A pooled analysis using data from five states (California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Texas) has shown that while 16% of first entries to foster care were infants between 1983 and 1986, this proportion rose to nearly 25% for the 1990 –1992 period (Goerge, Wulczyn, & Harden, 1994). In California, the incidence rate for first entries for infants was nearly 14 per 1,000 infants in the population in 1989, and has dropped slightly to about 10 per 1,000 in 1995. This rate is approximately three times the incidence rate for children of other ages (Needell, Webster, Barth, & Armijo, 1996). From conception on, poverty and its correlates directly affect infants’ well-being, with poor The authors gratefully acknowledge the California Department of Social Services for its support. Submitted for publication October 13, 1997; final revision received February 9, 1998; accepted May 3, 1998. Requests for reprints should be sent to Barbara Needell, Child Welfare Research Center, School of Social Welfare, 120 Haviland Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 –7400. Pergamon Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. 22, No. 12, pp. 1179 –1187, 1998 Copyright © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0145-2134/98 $19.00 + .00 1179