Domestic Violence, Employment, and Divorce

Using unique, representative data on domestic violence, we document several styl-ized facts on abuse and estimate a model that is consistent with the empirical evidence. Three aspects of domestic violence are illuminated in the data: the average characteris-tics of abused wives and abusive husbands are markedly different than the characteristics of individuals in non-violent marriages, the vast majority of violent marriages end in di-vorce, and employment rates are lower for women who experience abuse. We construct a sequential model of employment, marriage and abuse. The results indicate abuse is the primary factor in the decision to divorce and witnessing violence as a child is a strong predictor of becoming an abusive spouse. Policy experiments suggest that men are more responsive to policies designed to increase the costs of abuse than women are to policies reducing the cost of leaving violent marriages and that policies designed to reduce the inter-generational effects of domestic violence may be promising strategies for preventing domestic violence