Open AccessUnemployment and Domestic Violence: Theory and Evidence
Author(s) -
Anderberg Dan,
Rainer Helmut,
Wadsworth Jonathan,
Wilson Tanya
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 4.683
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1468-0297
pISSN - 0013-0133
DOI - 10.1111/ecoj.12246
Subject(s) - unemployment , domestic violence , demographic economics , economics , affect (linguistics) , incidence (geometry) , population , labour economics , criminology , suicide prevention , psychology , poison control , demography , sociology , medicine , economic growth , physics , communication , optics , environmental health
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.