Negligence is quickly becoming the most common form of child abuse, as it continues to rise while physical and sexual incidents decrease, NBC News reported.

According to a panel of experts, physical and sexual abuse among children has been on the decline for some 20 years. Negligence has become more common and the main cause has been from the parents.

"It may be because of increased awareness in the population, that it's something that has a profound impact on children and should be reported," said panel member Dr. Angela Diaz, professor of pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, noting the positive signs of physical and sexual abuse declining.

Despite the positive signs, doctors and experts say they still need to pay close attention to why those rates are going down while instances of negligence continue to rise. The panel said more research needs to be done with emotional and negligent abuse, as well as the development of a new database meant to track child abuse statistics.

"Each year more than 3 million referrals for child abuse and neglect are received that involve around 6 million children, although most of these reports are not substantiated," the report read. "In fiscal year 2011, the latest year for which data are available, state child protective services agencies encountered 676,569 children, or about 9.1 of every 1,000 children, who were found to be victims of child abuse and neglect, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, and medical and other types of neglect."

Anne Petersen, chairwoman of the committee that wrote the report and research professor at the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, told USA Today the cumulative cost to society for funding child abuse studies is about $80.3 billion per year.

"That was one of the most powerful conclusions that came through the research in the last 20 years. It's well established that the effects are cumulative, long-lasting and come at great cost to individuals and society," she said.

According to the research, published in the journal National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, psychological and emotional abuse, or negligence accounts for 75 percent of all reported child abuse cases.