Digital Health Technologies Empower Family-Mediated Interventions for Autistic Children: A Scoping Review.
Chinese families lose more money to lost wages and travel than to medical bills, so BCBAs must treat non-medical costs as a core treatment variable.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Xu et al. (2026) looked at 67 Chinese families who have a child with autism .
They asked parents to list every yuan they spent on the child in one year.
Costs were split into medical bills, therapy fees, travel, lost work days, and extra help at home.
What they found
Non-medical costs plus lost wages were the biggest slice of the pie.
These hidden costs were larger than hospital or clinic bills.
Families said money worries kept them up at night more than therapy schedules.
How this fits with other research
Leng et al. (2024) show migrant kids in China get diagnosed later.
Late entry means parents miss free public services and pay more out of pocket, matching the heavy burden Peipei reports.
Rivera-Figueroa et al. (2025) found small racial gaps in US service use.
Their data say stigma hurts Asian families most, yet money still trumps race as a barrier, echoing Peipei’s cost story.
Oppenheim et al. (2025) found almost no studies teach autistic people how to handle money.
That gap looks worse now: families bleed cash, but we teach neither them nor the child basic budgeting.
Why it matters
If you write a behavior plan, ask about lost work hours and bus fare before you add extra clinic visits.
Offer telehealth or parent coaching at odd hours so mom or dad does not skip another shift.
Track these hidden costs in your discharge summary; funding bodies need numbers to open respite stipends.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
This is the first comprehensive national study to explore the direct and indirect costs for families of children with autism spectrum disorder in China. The increasing prevalence of autism spectrum disorder highlights a growing need for resources to provide care for families of children with autism spectrum disorder. The medical and nonmedical costs and parents' productivity loss have caused a serious burden on their families. Our objective is to estimate the direct and indirect costs for the families of children with autism spectrum disorder in China. The target population was parents of children with autism spectrum disorder. We analyzed the costs using cross-sectional data from a Chinese national family survey with children aged 2-6 years (N = 3236) who were clinically diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Family data from 30 provinces in China were obtained. Cost items included direct medical costs, direct nonmedical costs, and indirect costs. In this study, we found that the largest part of family costs for autism spectrum disorder are nonmedical costs and productivity loss. Autism spectrum disorder has imposed a huge economic burden on parents having children with autism spectrum disorder in China, who need more support than the current health care system provides.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2026 · doi:10.1177/13623613231158862