Financial, Health Impacts of Child Abuse Can Last a Lifetime

“We found associations of child neglect and abuse with adult socioeconomic circumstances at age 50,” said lead author Snehal Pinto Pereira.

Physical, social or emotional abuse in childhood was linked at midlife to a greater risk of time off from work due to long-term sickness, said Pereira, a research associate at University College London’s Institute of Child Health.

Mistreatment in childhood also lowered the odds of owning a home, she said.

“The associations for child neglect were linked to their poor reading and mathematics skills in adolescence, which in turn could hamper their ability to find work and progress in the job market,” she explained.

The research is only observational and doesn’t establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Still, it appears that children who suffered more than one type of abuse were most likely to be thwarted economically.