The Economic Costs and Consequences of Child Abuse in Canada

This project is the collaborative effort of faculty from the Departments of Economics and Women’s Studies at the University of Western Ontario, the Program for Traumatic Stress Recovery at Homewood Health Centre and an independent economic costing consultant, funded by the Law Commission of Canada. Its goal is to measure the economic costs of child abuse for 1998 for Canada. Major sources for this project include provincial and federal budgets, the Incidence-based Uniform Crime Survey (UCR2), the Canadian Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS) and the 1990 Ontario Health Survey Mental Health Supplement (OHSUP). The main goal of this research is to increase awareness of how the costs and consequences of child abuse ultimately affects all Canadians and in turn contributes to the reduction of child abuse in Canadian society.