Unemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence

an article by Dan Anderberg, Jonathan Wadsworth and Tanya Wilson (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Helmut Rainer (University of Munich and Ifo Institute) published in The Economic Journal Volume 126 Issue 597 (November 2016)

Abstract

Does rising unemployment really increase domestic violence as many commentators expect? The contribution of this article is to examine how changes in unemployment affect the incidence of domestic abuse.

Theory predicts 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 labour market data from the UK’s Annual Population Survey, we find strong evidence in support of the theoretical prediction.

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