Abstract
This quantitative dissertation investigates how socioeconomic inequalities manifest at the referral and intervention stages of decision-making in the Norwegian child welfare system. Although children from low socioeconomic status (SES) families have long been overrepresented in child welfare services, this dissertation uses high-quality administrative data on two Norwegian birth cohorts (1995 and 2005) to examine these patterns in greater depth across three peer-reviewed articles. The first two articles address the referral stage. The first examines how changes in parental relationship status are associated with referrals to the child welfare system, while the second analyzes how SES, household composition, immigrant background, and gender shape referral patterns. The third article turns to the intervention stage, exploring sociodemographic disparities in the cumulative probabilities of child welfare involvement and out-of-home placement by age 13. A key contribution of the dissertation is its intersectional approach: the second and third articles explicitly consider how SES, immigrant or ethnic background, and family structure interact to shape a child’s likelihood of contact with the system. Across the three studies, the findings reveal consistent patterns. Low-SES families are substantially overrepresented at both the referral and intervention stages, while high-SES families are underrepresented. Families with immigrant backgrounds—particularly from non-Western countries—and single-parent households also show higher rates of involvement. The analyses demonstrate that socioeconomic and ethnic disparities are intersectional rather than additive. Among low-SES children, those with two non-Western-born parents had the lowest likelihood of intervention or out-of-home placement, whereas those with two Norwegian-born parents had the highest; among middle- and high-SES children, this relationship was reversed. Single-parent household status and SES, however, displayed additive effects: low-SES, single-parent families were most likely to be referred to and receive interventions from the child welfare system, while high-SES, two-parent families were least likely. Interpreting these patterns is complex. One the one hand, child welfare involvement among low-SES, immigrant, and single-parent families likely plays a crucial role in addressing need and mitigating inequality. On the other, it may inadvertently reinforce inequality through stigmatization and an emphasis on individual responsibility over structural conditions. Addressing child welfare inequalities therefore requires confronting social and economic factors that can constrain parenting capacity, while also critically examining how systemic biases may render some families more visible to intervention than others.