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Black children are overrepresented in child welfare; the cause is contested

Black children are substantially overrepresented in the U.S. child-welfare system — in foster care at roughly twice their share of the child population — but the cause is genuinely contested: quasi-random-assignment evidence from one large system found Black children 55% more likely to be placed than white children with identical potential for future maltreatment, while national and state benchmark studies find reporting disparities no larger than underlying poverty-and-harm disparities and equal-or-lower substantiation and placement odds after a report, locating the disparity upstream in structural socioeconomic conditions.