Synopsis 
This report was written by Senior Researcher Robert B. Hill, Race Matters Consortium, Westat. It was published in December 2007 by the Casey-CSSP Alliance for Racial Equity in Child Welfare.

Dr. Hill's study makes several important contributions to the study of disproportionality and disparity in the child welfare system.

While most studies focus on comparisons between blacks and whites, this analysis incorporates other communities, namely American Indians, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics.

Furthermore, while most studies examine disproportionality at only one geographic level, this analysis describes racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparity at three levels—national, state, and county.

What is disproportionality?
Previous analyses have shown that black children are overrepresented in the child welfare system in every state. Native American/American Indian and Alaska Native children are all overrepresented in the jurisdictions in which they reside. Hispanic children are overrepresented in more than 10 states, and their representation in the child welfare system is on the rise.

At the same time, Asian/Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander children tend to be underrepresented in the child welfare system.