What six years of reported allegations show
Findings from monthly SOC 242 financial-abuse allegation data for all 58 California counties, FY2019-20 through FY2024-25, with suppressed months carried explicitly as intervals.
- 01
Reported allegations rose statewide over six fiscal years
The statewide midpoint rate moved from 86.7 to 123.8 reported financial-abuse allegations per 10,000 residents age 65+ between FY2019–20 and FY2024–25, a change of about 42.8%. The direction holds under both the low and high suppression scenarios. This statewide series is a descriptive aggregate of county scenario totals divided by statewide senior person-years; it is not a separate inferential trend test, and no statewide significance is claimed.
- 02
34 of 58 counties show statistically supported increases
After Benjamini–Hochberg correction across all 58 county tests, 34 counties showed increasing reported allegation rates, 23 showed no clear trend, and 1 showed a decrease. Increases appear across county sizes: 12 of the 16 counties with 100,000 or more residents age 65+, 19 of the 29 mid-sized counties, and 3 of the 13 counties with fewer than 10,000. Smaller counties are less likely to reach statistical support partly because their published records are sparser, not necessarily because reporting there is flat.
- 03
Suppression, not absence of reports, shapes the rural record
1,195 of 4,176 county-months (28.6%) were withheld for small counts, and 11 counties had at least 70% of their months suppressed. A suppressed month is a small non-zero count, so treating it as zero would systematically understate reporting in small counties.
- 04
Small senior populations make single-year rates unstable
13 counties carry a small-population flag: 8 with fewer than 5,000 residents age 65+ and 5 with 5,000 to under 10,000. In these counties a handful of additional reports can move the annual rate by tens of points, which is why the Observatory publishes ranges and multi-year trends rather than single-year rankings.
- 05
Direct cross-county comparisons of reported rates require substantial caution
Reported rates reflect how allegations reach an agency: outreach, mandated-reporter practice, intake staffing, referral pathways and suppression all differ by county. Two counties with identical underlying exploitation can publish very different reported rates, so direct cross-county comparisons of reported rates require substantial caution.
Statewide reported rate
- Counties
- 58
- Fiscal years
- FY2019–20 – FY2024–25
- County-months assembled
- 4,176
- Exact monthly values
- 2,901 (69.5%)
- Model
- Interval-censored Negative Binomial
- Exposure
- Year-specific population age 65+
- Multiplicity control
- Benjamini–Hochberg FDR
None of these findings measure the prevalence of elder financial exploitation, and none support ranking counties against one another. “No clear trend” means there was not enough statistical evidence after multiple-testing correction. It does not mean the county was proven to be flat.
Counties highlighted by the analysis
Highlighted because of the direction or precision of their own measured change over time. Being highlighted is not a finding about how much elder financial abuse occurs in that county.
Steepest measured increases
Estimated annual percent change in reported allegations, significant after FDR correction.
Measured decreases
Counties whose reported allegation rate declined with statistical support.
- Nevada-8.3%
County trends were estimated using monthly interval-censored Negative Binomial models with year-specific senior-population exposure. Statistical significance was corrected across all 58 county tests using the Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate procedure.