Open AccessSelecting Social Indicators to Forecast Child Welfare Caseload
Author(s) -
Raghubar D. Sharma
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
canadian studies in population
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.157
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1927-629X
pISSN - 0380-1489
DOI - 10.25336/p66p61
Subject(s) - predictability , welfare , regression analysis , social welfare , census , unit (ring theory) , psychology , demography , environmental health , statistics , economics , population , medicine , sociology , political science , mathematics , mathematics education , law , market economy
The purpose of this study is to identify an optimum number of social indicatorsthat provide maximum predictability of child welfare caseloads. The analysis isbased on cross-sectional data pooled from the 1996 and 2001 censuses. The unit of analysis is the census division. From an exhaustive review of literature on social indicators and child welfare, we identified ten risk factors. Then, weidentified social indicators that were statistically associated with the risk factors. After measuring the statistical association between social indictors with child welfare caseload, this study develops regression models to select and narrow down a list of social indicators with the highest predictability.