Can economic empowerment reduce the risk of women suffering domestic abuse?

Posted on: 25 November 2024 by Dr Noemi Mantovan in Research

With a staggering number of yearly victims of domestic abuse in the UK, Dr Noemi Mantovan explores how partner violence impacts the female labour supply and women’s life choices.

Noemi’s investigation indicates that having an abusive partner incentivises women to delay fertility or not have children at all, and divorce more often.

The study also confirms a significantly higher risk of abuse for women who are not working, compared to those who participate in the labour market.

While higher wages also reduce women’s overall exposure to abuse, the analysis reveals income support and subsidised childcare largely fail to do so by encouraging early fertility.

The study offers valuable insight into the multidimensional effects of domestic violence on female lifecycle decisions and the effectiveness of policies aimed at countering it. 

This investigation is part of a wider research project, where Noemi seeks to better understand the factors influencing women’s lifecycle decisions, with new studies on the effects of poor mental health and menopause.

Domestic violence towards women in intimate relationships

The excitement of meeting a new love interest usually comes with hopes of a happy, long-lasting and well-functioning relationship.

However, in far too many cases, these dreams are shattered when the new partner gradually shows physically or emotionally cruel behaviours.

This harsh reality is particularly common for women, as male violence against women is present in every part of the world, including the UK.

UK estimates show one in four women have been abused by partners in their lifetime, and there are around 1.7m female victims of domestic violence per year.

With just under 24% of cases being reported to the police¹, this is a largely hidden offence, and also the crime category with the highest level of repeat victimisation.

Understanding the impact of domestic violence on women’s decisions 

Intimate partner violence has far-reaching consequences for women’s mental and physical wellbeing, as well as for other important life decisions.

However, identifying the risk involved in a relationship with a person with a violent nature is not straightforward, because abusive dynamics are normally disclosed gradually.

This raises important questions on how women make decisions as they enter the cycle of abuse, including having children or separating, as well as whether certain career choices increase or reduce the risk for potential victims.

To shed light on these questions, Noemi and Professors Dan Anderberg and Robert M Sauer²,present a dynamic lifecycle model of women’s choices on childbearing, employment and divorce in an environment where they are at risk of abuse from partners.

Using Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)³ data, the research team focused on the answers of nearly 4,000 first-time mothers to questions on intimate partner abuse, labour supply and fertility choices⁴.

Working women at lower risk of being abused

The model confirms a U-shaped relationship between working and exposure to abuse, meaning women have less risk of suffering domestic violence if they have a job.

The results reveal working part-time reduces the rate of abuse by almost 14% compared to not working, and those with higher earnings have a 4.5% less risk of becoming victims.

The model also shows that as violent men are high-frequency repeat abusers, women become aware of their nature quite fast, creating strong incentives to delay having children by a few years.

Divorce becomes five times more likely once the episodes of abuse start, and the chances of women conceiving a further child reduce substantially.

Income support and subsidised childcare fail to counter domestic violence

In addition to demonstrating the direct abuse-reducing effect of working and higher earnings, the research team also explored the potential effects of policies aimed at supporting female economic empowerment.

To do so, they estimated how women’s decisions would change in response to shifts in the economic environment, including:

• Raising female wages to close the gender pay gap
• Higher child-related income for single mothers
• Subsidised childcare support for working mothers.

In the first experiment, female earnings were raised to equal average wages for both genders (+15%), which resulted in an overall delay in fertility, especially for young women.

While better wages decreased the incidences of abuse by a timid 2%, the counterfactual simulations highlighted a clear effect on key behavioural responses, such as divorcing more often, delaying fertility and working more frequently.

In other words, better labour market opportunities mean women are less likely to become trapped in abusive relationships, by not having children early on in relationships and being financially better placed to leave.

The second experiment tested the potential of more generous income support for single mothers to reduce domestic abuse.

The results reveal a major encouragement of fertility by every measure: lower age at first birth, less childless women and a higher average number of children.

Incentivised childbearing, plus access to non-labour income, mean women would be perversely shifted away from employment, reducing their opportunities to enter the workforce.

More worryingly, income support not only fails to reduce exposure to domestic violence but also leads to higher rates of abuse, particularly towards mothers.

The final policy experiment explores the impact of cutting down the cost of childcare for working mothers by 20%.

While this measure encourages labour force participation, it again encourages fertility by reducing the overall expected cost associated with having children.

As the estimations show a negligible effect on abuse, subsidised childcare could be seen as a reasonable policy to encourage fertility and labour supply, without making women more exposed to violence.

However, a closer look into the numbers reveals an important caveat: the incidence of abuse among mothers – and hence the exposure to abuse for children – increases by about 3%.

Both findings refute the popular assumption that higher income support and subsidised childcare enable women to leave abusive relationships.

This confirms any efforts to develop effective policies against domestic violence need to consider the multiple short and long-term effects of women’s life decisions.

1 Source: National Centre for Domestic Violence. Base on ONS data 2022, Violence Against Women & Girls: Research Update Nov 2022, Femicide Census, Domestic Abuse Act 2021: Policy Background, National Centre for Domestic Violence 2022 and HMIC 2019 and 2015. 

2 Dan and Robert are Professors of Economics at Royal Holloway University of London..

3 The ALSPAC offers annual survey data on a set of children and their parents from birth until they turn seven.

4 The study also includes British Crime Survey data to reflect the abuse experiences by childless women. 

Dr Noemi Mantovan Senior Lecturer in Economics