Employment and the Risk of Domestic Violence: Does the Breadwinner's Gender Matter?

This paper studies the effect on the risk of female victimization of the employment statuses of both partners, conditional on income and a set of sociodemographic characteristics. Using cross-sectional data from the Violence Against Women (VAW) surveys for Spain in 1999, 2002, and 2006, we address the potential endogeneity of employment and income variables using a multivariate probit model. We exploit geographical-level information on employment and unemployment rates by gender and age, and on household income, to identify the parameters of the model. Our estimation results, for which proper account of the endogeneity problem proves critical, show that male partner employment plays a major role in the risk of physical violence, while female employment only lowers the risk of violence when her partner is employed too. The lowest risk of physical abuse appears for more egalitarian couples in which both partners are employed