Unemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence

Dan Anderberg, Helmut Rainer, Jonathan Wadsworth and Tanya Wilson

No 7515, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Is unemployment the overwhelming determinant of domestic violence that many commentators expect it to be? The contribution of this paper is to examine, theoretically and empirically, how changes in unemployment affect the incidence of domestic abuse. The key theoretical prediction is that male and female unemployment have opposite-signed effects on domestic abuse: an increase in male unemployment decreases the incidence of intimate partner violence, while an increase in female unemployment increases domestic abuse. Combining data on intimate partner violence from the British Crime Survey with locally disaggregated labor market data from the UK's Annual Population Survey, we find strong evidence in support of the theoretical prediction.

Keywords: domestic violence; unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D19 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2016, 126 (597), 1947-1979

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7515.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Unemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence (2016)
Working Paper: Unemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence (2013)
Working Paper: Unemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence (2013)
Working Paper: Unemployment and domestic violence: theory and evidence (2013)
Working Paper: Unemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7515

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().