Association between Adverse Childhood Experiences and Child Homelessness in the United States

Abstract

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) contribute to increased risk of homelessness in the United States (U.S.). However, there is scarcity of research linking ACEs to homelessness in children using nationally representative samples in the U.S. Therefore, this study examined the association between individual and cumulative ACEs and parent-reported child homelessness in the U.S. Data for this study were derived from the 2022 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). An analytic sample of 965 children (51.8% males; average age 11.5 years) was analyzed using weighted proportions to obtain prevalence estimates, and six sets of logistic regression models. Results showed that among the 965 children who experienced homelessness, 41% had four or more ACEs, 13.7% had three ACEs, 14% had two ACEs, 16.9% had at least one ACE, and 14.4% had no ACEs, as reported by parents. After controlling for individual, family, and community-level factors, children with four or more ACEs, three ACEs, two ACEs, and one ACE were significantly associated with higher odds of experiencing homelessness compared to children without ACEs. Additionally, nine out of eleven individual ACEs (i.e., economic hardship, parental divorce/separation, parental death, parental incarceration, witnessing domestic violence, being a victim/witnessing neighborhood violence, living in a household with someone with mental illness and/or substance use problems, and experiencing discrimination) were significantly associated with increased odds of experiencing child homelessness after adjusting for covariates. This study has demonstrated that ACEs are evident risk factors that can lead to child homelessness in the U.S. Implications for practice and policies aimed at addressing wide range of interventions for preventing ACEs and child homelessness in the U.S. households are further discussed.