NCJ Number
178355
Journal
Child Welfare Volume: 78 Issue: 3 Dated: May/June 1999 Pages: 381-407
Date Published
1999
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This article presents the case for using benefit-cost analysis to structure evaluations of child abuse prevention and intervention programs.
Abstract
When child abuse prevention and intervention programs are proposed and evaluated, their costs and the various benefits they may produce are discussed. Systematic benefit-cost analysis, however, has not been applied in assessing such programs. This article argues that benefit-cost analysis can and should be used to help structure evaluations of the impact of child abuse prevention and intervention programs, as well as any program aimed at promoting child welfare. The authors present the basic ideas of benefit-cost analysis and of cost-effectiveness analysis, a closely related tool. These include the concepts of economic benefits and costs; the identification, measurement, projection, and discounting of benefits and costs likely to arise in child abuse prevention and intervention programs; the incorporation of equity effects; and how costs and benefits differ, depending on whether they are assessed by participants, nonparticipants, or society as a whole. This article also addresses the argument that a benefit-cost analysis will lead decision makers to focus too narrowly on the financial values of a program and downplay or ignore other important program impacts that cannot be translated into financial terms. 2 tables, 8 notes, and 32 references