Focus Taiwan
Date: 07/28/2020
By: Flor Wang and Chen Wei-ting

Taipei, July 28 (CNA) The incidence of child abuse in Taiwan is closely linked to parents' unemployment, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Linkou said Tuesday, citing one of its studies, and it urged the government and private sector to pay heed to the issue at this time when people are out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking at a news conference, Hsin Yi-chen (辛宜臻), an attending physician in the hospital's Department of Pediatric General Medicine, said the correlation between unemployment and child abuse became evident in the United States during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, when the number of children hospitalized with brain damage nearly doubled from previous years.

It was later discovered that the spike in child abuse during that period was closely related to a high unemployment rate at the time, Hsin said.

She said that in 2018, a team at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Linkou conducted a similar study, using unemployment data from the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics for the period 2004 to 2015, and a correlation between the two factors was also found.
[FULL  STORY]