| Sumario: | This paper studies the effects of the court-ordered removal of children from home on health, crime, and education. To isolate causal effects, I exploit quasi-random variation in judge assignment together with across-judge variation in the tendency to favour removal in an instrumental variable design. Using a novel data set ( N = 26,579 ) based on Swedish court documents that I transcribe and link with detailed register data, I find that court-ordered out-of-home placement has large adverse effects on the mortality of the marginal child. These effects are primarily driven by suicides that occur while the removed child is still placed in out-of-home care. Removal also causes an increase in hospitalizations for mental illness and non-narcotic crimes. There is little evidence of adverse health effects for birth parents. I explore potential explanations for the detrimental effects on child health. Adverse care conditions and peer exposure appear to be important channels.
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