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Confinement and intimate partner violence †
Author(s) -
Gibbons M. Amelia,
Murphy Tommy E.,
Rossi Martín A.
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
kyklos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.766
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1467-6435
pISSN - 0023-5962
DOI - 10.1111/kykl.12275
Subject(s) - domestic violence , endogeneity , sexual violence , population , intimate partner , government (linguistics) , pandemic , covid-19 , poison control , demographic economics , criminology , psychology , suicide prevention , environmental health , economics , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , econometrics
The effect of confinement on intimate partner violence is hard to assess, partly because of usual endogeneity problems, but also because the often‐used report calls poorly measure that violence. We exploit self‐reported survey data from Argentina to study the extent to which the coronavirus pandemic quarantine had unintended consequences on intimate partner violence. The quarantine decree established clear exceptions for heterogeneous subsets of the population and, for reasons plausibly exogenous to the prevalence of intimate partner violence, only some individuals were forced to spend more time with their partners. Using this variability in exposure we find that the lockdown led to an increase between 12% and 35% in intimate partner violence, depending type of violence (emotional, physical or sexual). Given the Argentinian government imposed the full national lockdown when few people felt threatened by the virus, these effects are likely to have been triggered by the actual confinement.