Published in The Review of Economics and Statistics, the study, led by Monash University and the University of South Australia, provides rigorous evidence on how a 2009 South Australian reform which raised the school-leaving age from 16 to 17 impacted health, schooling and child protection outcomes.

Making school compulsory at 16 improved attendance and reduced emergency healthcare use, particularly among children with past involvement with Child Protection Services (CPS). It also reduced first-time maltreatment cases reported to CPS.

Using administrative records and comparing children who were affected by the schooling reform with children who were unaffected, the study found that public school enrolment increased by roughly 6 per cent.

First-time maltreatment reports and emergency department visits dropped by 38 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. The reduction in emergency department visits was driven mainly by fewer injury-related visits among children.

The study estimates that the policy reform led to, on average, an extra 412 children enrolled in public school annually.

Additionally, 92 fewer children experienced first-time maltreatment, and 157 fewer children attended the emergency department each year following the reform.

“On balance, we conclude that past extensions to the school-leaving age played an important role in the lives of children exposed to child maltreatment or at risk, by improving these children’s safety,” the researchers found.

“The benefits from additional schooling appear to be driven primarily by staying within the education environment itself.”

First author Dr Adam Dzulkipli, a research fellow at the Monash University Centre for Health Economics in the Monash Business School, says abused and neglected children are at high risk of school dropout and poor health.

He believes this is the first study to examine how extending schooling impacts the likelihood of maltreatment or maltreatment-related harm in Australia.

“From a policy perspective, our results suggest that policy interventions aimed at increasing student retention and encouraging children to remain engaged with school can have a powerful impact on their safety,” Dzulkipli says.

“While these policies are typically introduced to enhance educational outcomes, our study suggests other potential benefits.

“Using previously established costs of maltreatment in the Australian context, we also found that the reduction in first-time child maltreatment translated to an annual saving of $46 million in lifetime costs associated with maltreatment, for example government services use, productivity losses, and premature mortality.”

Co-author and Centre for Health Economics Associate Professor Nicole Black says child maltreatment rates were unacceptably high globally, and those who experienced it were at high risk of severe adverse outcomes throughout their lives.

In the US and Australia, roughly 5 per cent of all children were reported to Child Protection Services for maltreatment during 2020-21, according to Australia’s 2022 Productivity Commission and the US Department of Health & Human Services.

Black says governments have an economic incentive and a moral obligation to help these children, and more work is needed to uncover effective interventions in the long term.

“Our findings suggest that the adverse outcomes suffered by maltreated children can potentially be reduced by appropriately designed policy interventions,” Black says.

“Given the large individual and social costs of child maltreatment, more investment in such policies is important and would be worthwhile.”

Click here to read the paper titled ‘The Impact of Compulsory Schooling on Maltreatment and Associated Harms’.