The Role of Economic Factors on Women’s Risk for Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract

National data from Canada and the United States are used to examine the connection between women’s economic contributions to the family and their risk for physical and emotional abuse. Analyses show that American women are at a twofold greater risk; however, the relationship between economic variables and the risk of both physical violence and coercive control are more complex. Income serves to reduce the risk of both violence and coercive control for both Canadian and American women, whereas education serves as a clear protective factor for American women, but does not provide the same benefit for Canadian women.

Keywords

cross-national economic factors intimate partner violence

Background

The risk of intimate partner violence has dramatically decreased since the late 1980s and early 1990s in both the United States and Canada (Dugan, Nagin, & Rosenfeld, 1999; J. A. Fox & Zawitz, 2010; Statistics Canada, 2011). American and Canadian scholarly research suggests that these declines in intimate partner violence victimization paralleled an increase in the economic status of women (Dawson, Pottie Bunge, & Baldé, 2009; Farmer & Tiefenthaler, 2003; G. L. Fox, Benson, DeMaris, & Van Wyk, 2008). Consistent with economic theory and marital dependency perspectives, women’s economic gains include increased access to greater levels of power, control, and decision making within their intimate relationships. This suggests that programs that focus on providing women economic opportunities may be effective at reducing women’s risk for victimization. Similarly, numerous researchers have explored the relationship between partner violence and a number of socio-demographic variables including income, education, employment, and social class (Hotaling & Sugarman, 1986, 1990; Kalmuss & Straus, 1990; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980). However, some contemporary research has cast doubt on these conclusions, suggesting that these economic factors have little impact on women’s risk of experiencing spousal violence (Statistics Canada, 2011). In this article, we use national data from Canada and the United States to examine the connection between women’s economic contributions to the family and their risk for physical violence and emotional abuse. Although research in each country has looked at the role of economic variables in shaping women’s risk for victimization, researchers have less often conducted cross-national and comparative work on violence within intimate relationships.

There is a fairly rich body of literature that concerns cross-national comparisons of the prevalence and risk factors of violence against women. These studies often focus on comparing a large number of developed and non-developed countries (for two recent examples, see Ellsberg & Heise, 2005; H. Johnson, Ollus, & Nevala, 2008). This research is crucial for understanding the cultural and political context in which violence against women occurs and is sometimes condoned. However, without detailed comparisons within first world, Western-style, industrial nations, we are not able to fully explore the problem of violence and victimization and clearly identify the role and nature of risk and protective factors associated with violence-related injuries. In other words, comparing countries with similar cultures, but non-comparable distributions of violence, allows researchers to more thoroughly disentangle the risk and protective factors associated with intimate partner victimization. Canada and the United States are two countries that are culturally similar and often lumped together in cross-national research as representing liberal Western democracies. However, the United States’s rate of intimate partner violence is much higher than Canada’s (Rennison, 2003; Trainor, 2002), and as Grandin and Lupri (1997) note, research has yet to thoroughly explore the differences in intimate partner violence between these countries.

To that end, in this article, we use national data from Canada and the United States to examine the connection between women’s economic contributions to the family and their risk for physical violence and emotional abuse. While intra-country research has examined the role of economic variables in shaping women’s risk for victimization, less often have researchers conducted cross-national and comparative work on violence within intimate relationships. Therefore, this study contributes to the body of literature by disaggregating the distribution of violence within each country by theoretically relevant indicators of women’s status and comparing these distributions between the United States and Canada. This study is a first step in considering how socio-economic status may differentially influence women’s risk of intimate partner violence among countries that have been presumed to be similar.

This study is timely because women’s economic contributions have become critical resources for the financial well-being of American and Canadian families (Amato, Johnson, Booth, & Rogers, 2003; Nock, 2001; Smith, 2008; White & Rogers, 2000). In the early 1970s, less than 20% of households would have been conceptualized as being dual income, but by the late 2000s, women’s income became a substantial contribution in close to half of all marriages. At the same time, there has been a substantial drop in the role of men as sole providers and modest drops in men’s contributions as the primary breadwinner. These changes in the economic roles of women and men have important implications for marital quality, satisfaction with marriage, conflict, and violence.

The rest of this article proceeds as follows. First, the theoretical role of socio-economic structure in shaping women’s risk for intimate partner violence is discussed. Second, the similarities and differences between Canada and the United States with regard to these factors are provided. Subsequently, using two datasets, cross-national comparisons of two forms of intimate partner violence are provided. More specifically, the analysis entails the exploration of how indicators of women’s status shape the distributions of emotional abuse and physical violence against females by their current male partners.

Women’s Status and the Risk for Intimate Partner Violence

A number of researchers (Farmer & Tiefenthaler, 2003; Kaukinen, 2004) have argued that changes in the economic status of women (e.g., their educational and employment attainment) are likely to offer women opportunities to prevent, leave, and end violent and abusive relationships. Brewer and Smith (1995) contend that the further removed women are from involvement in paid labor, the less power they exert in their relationships. Consistent with economic theory and marital dependency perspectives, these scholars argue that as women gain economic independence from their male partners, they have access to greater levels of power, control, and decision making within their intimate relationships. Employment, therefore, serves as a form of power in women’s relationships. In addition, G.L. Fox and colleagues (2008) hypothesize that employment shapes women’s daily routines outside the home, thereby expanding their social networks and reducing isolation that would otherwise increase their vulnerability. In sum, economic status equates to both tangible and intangible resources a woman can utilize to decrease her initial risk of violence and increase her ability to leave a violent relationship by decreasing her dependency on marriage.

Although marital dependency (Hotaling & Sugarman, 1986, 1990; Straus et al., 1980) and stress frustration perspectives conceptualize income, education, and employment as indicators of access to resources, they have symbolic importance for gender identities, self-esteem, and marital conflict. According to resource theory, power is the ability of one individual to affect influence over another. Given that family and marital relationships are systems in which economic power determines and shapes roles and responsibilities, violence in homes and within intimate relationships may be used when other resources are absent. Indeed, Brush (2011) notes that intimate partner violence sometimes prevents and/or follows women’s participation in the labor market. Women’s employment (and access to other economic resources) may, therefore, increase their risk for intimate partner violence.

Gartner and McCarthy (1995) have suggested the application of a motivational perspective for reconciling these seemingly opposing hypotheses regarding the relationship between women’s employment and the risk for lethal violence by intimate partners. They point out that historically, employment has been conceptualized as right for men and a privilege for women. They suggest that some men may interpret a woman’s employment as a threat to their role and status within the family as a breadwinner. In applying this approach, they predict that a woman’s risk for intimate partner violence would be higher when her social status is viewed as threatening traditional social relationships and hierarchies. They also note the importance of a historical examination that recognizes that the relationship between social statuses, such as women’s employment, and women’s risk for violent victimization may have changed over time. They suggest that employment for women may heighten the risk for intimate partner violence when female employment is less normative, less common, or during the initial movement of women into the labor force. Over time, employment may serve as a mechanism by which women will be able to protect themselves from the risk for violence while also offering avenues for ending violent relationships.

This position is largely consistent with a liberal feminist perspective, which would predict that greater levels of gender inequality might lead to elevated rates of lethal and less-than-lethal victimization by placing women at a structural disadvantage relative to men. Thus, over time, with changes in women’s relative role in the labor market, gender equality may have an ameliorative effect on violence. Similarly, a radical feminist hypothesis would predict that greater levels of gender inequality increase the risk of victimization because a consequence of this underlying system of patriarchy is to place women at risk for violence by their male partners while also limiting their access to economic avenues to ending abuse. Radical feminist researchers and scholars have also argued that greater levels of gender equality may lead to a temporary “backlash,” whereby men, because of the threatened erosion of their position of power relative to their female partners, try to regain control through the use of violence (Russell, 1975). Dugan and colleagues’ (1999) research provides partial support for the “backlash” theory. They found that women’s earnings increase rather than decrease their risk for victimization. In a second study, they found that aggressive policies aimed at exposure reduction sometimes increase women’s risk of lethal victimization (Dugan, Nagin, & Rosenfeld, 2003).

Socio-Economic Structure of Canada and the United States

In looking at the social, economic, cultural, and political structures between Canada and the United States, it is clear that the two countries share a tremendous amount in common. Both share high levels of female labor force participation, educational attainment, and a similar high standard of living. As Grandin and Lupri (1997) note, “although gender equality has not been realized fully in either Canada or the United States, the status of women is improving" (p. 422). Despite these overarching similarities, a complex pattern exists between these countries with respect to income inequality and differences in women’s attainment of economic resources. In assessing income disparities, researchers often use the Gini coefficient. This worldwide measure ranges between 0 (no disparity) and 1 (extreme disparity). Research by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (2012) indicates that income inequality is higher in Canada (0.324 Gini coefficient) than among many of its G7 peers, yet Canada’s wealth is distributed more equally compared with the United States (0.378 Gini coefficient). Data from the U.S. Department of Commerce (2011) show that a greater percentage of women compared with men have at least a high school education, and Smith’s (2008) research finds that between 1970 and 2000, the rate rose from 61% to approximately 75%. However, in Canada, the rates of educational attainment are much higher for women. Among Canadian women, only 14% did not complete high school in the 1990s, and this rate declined to 7% by the late 2000s (Statistics Canada, 2011).

In terms of employment, a greater proportion of American women are in the labor force. Smith (2008) notes that the trend in employment rates for American women has increased from 57% in 1970 to 75% in 2000. In Canada, the percentage of employed women has also followed an upward trend over the last several decades. However, the level and change in rates have not been as large. The rate of Canadian women’s employment was 42% in the 1970s and increased to 56% in the early 2000s (Ferrao, 2010). Although the employment rate is higher among American women, there are similarities with respect to trends in income. Smith’s research on American women’s levels of income notes a rise from $27,000 (USD) in 1970 to $31,000 (USD) by 2000. Similarly, Canadian income rose from $20,000 (CDN) in the mid-1970s to $30,000 (CDN) by the mid-2000s (Williams, 2010).

Both Canadian and American women, despite women’s steady gains in earnings, continue to earn less than Canadian and American men. Smith (2008) notes that the average annual earnings for American women in 2000 were 71% of the median earnings for men, an improvement in the gender gap in earnings from 1970 when it was 59%. Likewise, in 1998, the average annual earnings for Canadian women were 61% those of men (Statistics Canada, 2011).

Despite the similarities with regard to relative equality in income, there are pronounced differences between Canada and the Unites States at the lowest ends of the socio-economic spectrum. Smith (2008) notes that American women’s risk for poverty was relatively stable between 1970 and 2000, being 8% and 11%, respectively. Conversely, although the measures are not exactly comparable, research in Canada suggests that the proportion of women defined as low-income has decreased over the last several decades, from 15% in the mid-1970s to 10% by the late 2000s (Williams, 2010).

Access and availability of income-supplementing programs are likely to represent a bridge for women leaving the workforce, providing a mechanism for women to be less dependent on marriage. There are notable differences between Canada and the United States with regard to the level and nature of benefits. Not only is the benefit level higher in Canada but also the maximum benefit duration is longer. Van Audenrode and colleagues (2005) note that Canada is the only country where employment insurance eligibility is determined by hours of work, allowing multiple part-time jobholders to receive benefits. In contrast, in the United States, eligibility is linked to worked days, weeks, and months, or even the amount of paid contributions. Furthermore, these support systems in the United States have changed substantially over the last two decades. The most significant change was passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWOA, 1996), which pushed many women into low-wage, unskilled labor through the addition of work requirements for benefits.

Canada also provides more support for families. Canada has historically provided greater family leave benefits for working women. As Marshall (2003) notes, as early as the 1970s, Canadian mothers could claim up to 15 weeks of maternity benefits and by 1990, an additional 10 weeks of parental leave benefits were added. By 2000, Canada had increased the total maternity and parental paid leave time from 6 months to 1 year. In contrast, in the United States, the Family and Medical Leave Act provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected maternity leave per year.

In sum, scholars have recognized the role of economic indicators in shaping women’s risk of victimization by intimates. Although a greater proportion of women in the United States are involved in the workforce, recent research suggests that employment alone is not a sufficient path out of an abusive relationship. While structurally and culturally similar, Canada differs on a few socio-economic factors that may shape women’s risk of intimate partner violence. More specifically, Canadian women are comparatively better educated, the economic inequality gap is smaller, and there are more governmental support programs in Canada. Therefore, Canada serves as an ideal comparison to begin disentangling these relationships.

Goals of the Current Study

Despite their structural similarities and dissimilar distributions of violence, cross-national comparative research between the United States and Canada is limited, and examination of the prevalence and role of economic factors in the etiology of intimate partner violence is rare. Grandin and Lupri (1997) note that cross-cultural research shows some support for the proposition that intimate partner violence will be more common in societies in which other forms of violence are also common. Yet, in comparing the incidence of intimate partner violence in Canada and the United States, they conclude that the culture of violence thesis fails to take into account the violence–intimacy paradox: specifically, that there are economic and structural conditions that clearly distinguish between partner violence and other types of violent crime that are clearly higher in the United States.

To that end, this study adds to the body of literature examining the role of women’s status on the risk for intimate partner violence by comparing these indicators for the United States and Canada. Whereas research has identified distributional differences with regard to the risk of intimate partner violence between American and Canadian women, and research within each country has explored how socio-economic structure affects this risk, research has not thoroughly explored how these factors differentiate between the distributions of violence across both countries. We analyze two comparable samples and focus not only on physical violence but also on measures of emotional abuse by intimate partners.

Method

Data

To examine the influence of economic variables on the distributions of intimate partner violence and emotionally abusive behavior, we use data from the 1999 Canadian General Social Survey (CGSS), Personal Risk (Statistics Canada, 2000), and the Violence and Threats of Violence Against Women and Men in the United States, 1994-1996 (National Violence Against Women Survey; Tjaden & Thoennes, 1999). Although these data were collected a number of years ago, they are aptly suited to this study because they contain similar indicators for women’s socio-economic status and a variety of emotionally and physically abusive behaviors. In addition, a unique feature of these datasets is that they allow us to restrict our attention to married or cohabitating women and, further, to violence stemming from the woman’s current intimate partner. In this respect, they are advantageous over other nationally representative surveys of victimization (e.g., the National Crime Victimization Survey). The restriction to incidents perpetrated by the woman’s current partner allows us to more accurately examine the relationship between intimate partner violence and indicators of current socio-economic status. In other words, this restriction reduces the likelihood that we include incidents in which the status indicators and violence do not correspond to each other temporally.

The purpose of the CGSS was to better understand how Canadians perceived crime and the justice system and their experiences of victimization. The survey comprises 25,876 Canadian men and women (15 years of age and over), an overall response rate of 81%. Among those respondents, 7,408 were married or cohabitating women. The second dataset, NVAWS, is a national telephone survey of the adult non-institutionalized population, and consisted of 8,000 adult women and 8,005 adult men. The survey had a number of goals, among which were to estimate the prevalence and incidence of various forms of violence against women, and to provide data on the psychological consequences of such victimization. The women’s survey had a household participation rate of 72.1% for a total sample of 5,499 cohabitating or married women. The large sample size, socio-economic variables measured, and types of physical violence and coercive control included in the survey are advantages of these datasets not offered by any other data collections.

Variables

Intimate partner violence and emotional abuse

This study considers both physical and emotional abuse by the respondents’ current intimate partners. The measures of partner violence and emotional abuse are comparable between these two samples and similar to those used in other surveys of intimate partner violence. Experiences with violence ranged from threats, pushes, and slaps to the most severe forms of violence (such as sexual assault, choking, and assault with a weapon). Although physical violence by intimate partners is rare, the women in both samples reported a variety of forms of emotional abuse by their husbands. In line with the theoretical perspectives outlined above, we restrict our attention to behaviors in which the man seeks to control the woman through emotional coercion. This includes sexual jealousy, social isolation and control, property destruction, financial control, put downs, and/or threats to others. The distributions of these intimate partner violence indicators are displayed in the appendix.

Many relationships marked with coercive control do not feature physical violence, although rarely does physical abuse happen in the absence of emotional abuse. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, this form of emotional abuse is considered separately and defined as those relationships that feature coercive control, but no reported physical victimization. Figure 1 displays the distribution of intimate partner violence for both Canadian and American women in this sample. The frequency of intimate partner violence, both physical and emotional, is much higher among the American sample. As shown, the frequency of emotional abuse was approximately 10 percentage points higher in the United States compared with Canada (17.1% to 7.5%, comparatively). In addition, 3.5% of the women in the CGSS reported physical abuse compared with almost 6% in the NVAWS.

Figure 1.

Distribution of intimate partner violence.

Employment

Employment represents the most basic indicator of socio-economic status. It not only represents economic independence but also the potential to draw on another support network to enable leaving the offender. For the purposes of this study, employment was measured by whether the woman was employed either full- or part-time.¹ Between the two samples, the distribution of employment was fairly comparable. More Canadian women compared with American women were unemployed (47% to 39%, comparatively). Likewise, approximately 44% of Canadian women and 47% of American women were employed full-time.

Income

Considering that employment alone may not enable a woman to leave an abuser or exert control within a relationship, we also consider the distribution of intimate partner violence as a function of the woman’s income.² However, we are interested in income in the context of financial independence. The personal median income for both of these samples of women was between 15,000 and $20,000. Therefore, we differentiate between those women who are well below the poverty line ($5,000 (CDN) for Canadian and $10,000 (USD) for American). In contrast, with regard to high income, we consider American women who make more than $35,000 (USD) annually and Canadian women who earn more than $40,000 (CDN).³ Although the definition is controversial, these income thresholds are typically included in the “middle class.”

Education

Education may decrease the risk of intimate partner violence in a number of ways. First, it provides opportunities for vocational advancement. Second, it expands the social network of the woman. Finally, education may increase knowledge of services for victims. We examine the distribution of intimate partner violence along two pertinent educational thresholds: obtaining a high school degree and completing a bachelor’s degree. The American sample of women were slightly more educated with only 9% not obtaining a high school degree and 27% having at least a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, almost 20% of Canadian women reported not having graduated high school and 20% have obtained a bachelor’s degree.

Analysis

Considering that this study is one of the first to contrast Canada and the United States in terms of intimate partner violence and socio-economic factors, it is, therefore, exploratory and descriptive in nature. The goal of our article is to be a first step in examining the nature and dynamic of intimate partner violence among Canadian and American women. Given this goal, this is an initial exploration of the distributional differences between these two countries, and therefore, we rely mainly on descriptive statistics. More specifically, the overall rate of intimate partner violence for each country is disaggregated by the socio-economic indicators outlined above. The patterns are then compared between the countries. In addition, chi-square tests of within-country pairwise associations between women’s economic status (income, education, and employment) and intimate partner violence are provided.

Results

The frequency of violence as a function of the employment status of the woman is depicted in Figure 2. As shown, the overall frequency of intimate partner violence, especially coercive control, is considerably higher for American women. In addition to overall differences, there are also differences with regard to the relationship between employment and intimate partner violence. For Canadian women, the risk of physical violence is higher among employed women (4.2%-2.9%); however, the risk of coercive control is slightly lower with coercive violence being reported among 7.4% of employed women and 8.3% of unemployed women (χ² = 10.702, p < .01). Conversely, for American women, the frequency of coercive control is higher among employed women (18.2%-17.2%, comparatively) and the risk of violence is comparable, with less than a percentage point separating employed and unemployed women. In addition, no significant differences were detected among the groups in the American sample (χ² = 1.027, p > .05).

Figure 2.

Intimate partner violence and women’s employment.

Income, when conceptualized at the high end, serves as a buffer against intimate partner violence for both Canadian and American women (χ² = 18.818, p < .001 and χ² = 8.373, p < .05, respectively). However, this protective factor is more pronounced for coercive control. For Canadian women, the difference between poverty and high income is approximately 4 percentage points (9.10% and 4.80%) compared with less than 1 percentage point for physical violence (3.30% and 3.10%).⁴ This distributional difference is comparable for American women (with a slightly increased difference with regard to physical violence); however, the overall levels of violence (both coercive and physical) are still consistently higher than those for Canadian women (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Intimate partner violence and income.

Although beneficial for both groups of women, education emerges as more of a protective factor for American women than for Canadian women. For example, with regard to coercive control, approximately 27% of American women who have not obtained a high school degree reported experiencing coercive control at the hands of their current partner. This frequency is reduced by 10 percentage points for those who are high school graduates, and reduced another 3.5% for those who graduate college. For Canadian women, however, the reduction in risk is more modest, ranging from 10.9% for those without a high school degree to 6.10% for those with a college degree. Education emerges as a clear protective factor in the American sample for physical violence as well. More specifically, 8.6% of American women without a high school degree reported experiencing physical abuse, compared with 5.6% with a high school degree and 4.2% with a college degree. However, for Canadian women, the risk of physical violence is fairly comparable across educational categories, ranging from 3.1% for college degree to 3.8% for those with a high school degree (Figure 4).⁵

Figure 4.

Intimate partner violence and education.

Taken together, these results suggest that women who have access to educational and income resources are at reduced risk for intimate partner violence. However, it is women in the highest educational and income groups who experience the greatest benefit of their economic status.

Discussion

This article has contributed to research on intimate partner violence by highlighting the importance of cross-national research on the role of economic factors in the etiology of intimate partner violence. Given the cultural, political, and structural similarities, the United States and Canada provide an excellent comparison of the extent, nature, and correlates of intimate partner violence. Our findings point to the need for scholars to further explore the role of economic factors on the risk of violence by intimate partners across similarly situated first world nations because exploring the distributional differences, risk, and protective factors between these countries can lead to the identification of policies and interventions that are likely to lead to a reduction in violence against women.

To illustrate, there are three key findings from this study for which we can draw important conclusions regarding cross-national trends in intimate partner violence and the role of economic factors. First, American women are at an elevated risk for partner violence as compared with Canadian women. Canadian women differ in important ways from American women with respect to economic factors and the greater availability of income-supplementing programs, such as family leave, extensive employment insurance, and social welfare programming, which likely insulate women from the risk for violence by male intimate partners. We have demonstrated that socio-economic indicators do shape the distributions of both physical and emotional abuse. Future research should more directly link these programs and policies with the risk of intimate partner violence. This continuing research would lead to the identification of innovative and creative interventions that might be easily imported into either country given similarities in terms of language, culture, and economy.

Second, regardless of country, both income and education are insulators to violence by an intimate partner. This is consistent with the idea that higher levels of income and education serve to provide women with an alternative to being financially dependent on marriage and at risk for violence, while offering a clear pathway to leaving a violent relationship. Both Farmer and Tiefenthaler (2003) and Kaukinen (2004) have suggested that women’s economic status with respect to their income and educational attainment are likely to offer women opportunities to prevent, leave, and end violent and abusive relationships.

Third, and consistent with other research on the role of employment, we find that employed women are at greater risk of experiencing violence and abuse by an intimate partner (as compared with unemployed women). These findings parallel those of other researchers who have explored the role of employment on the risk of intimate partner violence using longitudinal data (Powers & Kaukinen, 2012). Employment has both socio-economic and symbolic implications for women’s decision making that are likely associated with women’s risk for non-lethal intimate partner violence. At the same time, our findings contrast with research within the marital dependency literature that suggests unemployed women are at greater risk of violence. This research suggests that women’s dependence on their husbands is often tied to their typically inferior earning power, which forces women to rely on their partners to maintain their standard of living (Kalmuss & Straus, 1990; Straus & Gelles, 1986; Straus, Gelles, & Smith, 1990). The conclusion, therefore, is that women who are economically dependent on marriage and their male partner are less able to end or leave violent relationships than are women in marriages where the balance of economic resources is more nearly equal (Kalmuss & Straus, 1990; Pagelow, 1981; Strube & Barbour, 1983). Our findings are clearly consistent with the suggestion that women’s employment has important consequences for the power dynamics within heterosexual intimate relationships, thus affecting women’s risk of violence (Anderson, 1997; Kaukinen, 2004).

Our findings have implications for the minimum threshold of income and education that are required to change the distribution of violence experienced by women. We have not simply focused on absolute measures of income, education, and employment; we have attempted to begin to identify how much income, education, and employment it would take to serve as a protective factor from intimate partner violence. This has important implications for policy and intimate partner violence interventions. Questions for future research, therefore, are as follows:

How much access to economic resources will it take for women to be in relationships without violence and, at the same time, how much will it take for women to be able to safely leave a violent relationship with their children?

Our study provides an initial starting point for the conversation on what those levels of economic resources need to be for women to be protected from (or leave) violent relationships and how interventions need to evolve to address them in an adequate way.

As we note, our findings point to the need for intimate partner interventions to identify and address the minimum socio-economic resources needed by women facing the decision of leaving a violent relationship. Research has found that women on welfare in the United States are actually at a higher risk of intimate partner violence compared with mainstream samples and low-income women who are not on welfare (see Tolman & Raphael, 2000, for a review). Likewise, Dugan and colleagues (2003) found that welfare assistance seemed to be more beneficial at preventing the homicide of married and unmarried men. Basic employment and job-seeking skills are not likely meeting the threshold for women to avoid and leave abusive and violent homes. This sentiment is echoed by Brush (2011), who concludes from interviews with current and former welfare recipients that workforce participation alone is an inadequate path out of domestic abuse. Rather, the women in their qualitative narratives pointed to education and job-skills training, paths to social mobility and independence, as ways out of abusive relationships. Likewise, our findings also point to the need for higher levels of education and income in providing insulation from violence by an intimate partner. Job interviewing skills, resume writing, and other basic employment skills may be helpful to some women who are transitioning for the first time into the job market. Yet, for many women who are actively employed, particularly those in low-income occupations with little opportunity for advancement, the types of interventions needed to reduce the risk of intimate partner violence are fairly substantial. These include greater access to continuing higher education and employment advancement. This suggests the need for service providers to partner with colleges and universities to assist women with the social and financial transition into higher education.

Although our findings represent one of the first cross-national examinations of the role of economic factors on the risk of intimate partner violence for Canadian and American women, data limitations temper our conclusions. Although the use of large-scale representative victimization data helps to avoid some of the problems associated with clinical sample bias, a different form of selectivity might potentially bias the results. Community samples typically underrepresent the most severe and violent forms of intimate partner abuse (M. P. Johnson, 1995), and women participating in national surveys may be unlikely to report incidents of violence as criminal assaults, thereby underestimating intimate partner violence (Dobash, Dobash, Wilson, & Daly, 1992). The samples may not include all women who are victims of the most severe types of intimate partner violence and may include a larger proportion of unemployed women who are the victims of intimate partner violence. Our study, therefore, may somewhat underestimate the effect of economic variables on the most severe types of intimate partner violence.

It is also important to note that the nature of violence by an intimate partner exists as an ongoing cycle. The risk of intimate partner violence and its relationship to income, education, and employment is likely more complicated, dynamic, and reciprocal than current data permit researchers to explore. As research by McCloskey (1996) shows, intimate partner offenders are more often unemployed, and perhaps intimate partner violence combined with the economic strains associated with their male partner’s unemployment lead some victimized women to seek out or maintain employment to sustain the economic health of their families. Although employment may be a temporary escape for abused women, in the long term, employment may actually serve as an avenue for ending violent relationships. Alternatively, over time, women’s income and employment opportunities may be limited by their experiences with violence and abuse. Our research findings with respect to education (given the relative stability and irreversibility of educational attainment) provide the greatest support for the conclusions by Farmer and Tiefenthaler (2003) and Kaukinen (2004), who have pointed to the importance of educational and employment attainment for providing women with opportunities to prevent, leave, and end violent and abusive relationships. Given these alternative explanations for the role of economic factors, it is important for future studies to gather longitudinal data that closely attend to the time order of socio-economic attainment and women’s risk for intimate partner violence.

In addition to the limitations of cross-sectional analyses in disentangling this complex relationship, it should be acknowledged that the construct of socio-economic equality may be measured in terms of absolute equality (as we have done here) or relative equality. Research by Kaukinen (2004), for example, has explored women’s economic contributions to the household relative to their male partner in looking at the risk for intimate partner violence. Unfortunately, our datasets do not allow for these types of analyses. However, our research does contribute to the literature by using cross-national comparisons to begin to explore the socio-economic structural factors that insulate women from violence. Our analysis supports the idea that in terms of absolute equality, there is a threshold of resources that must be reached before the risk of violence decreases.

In our study, we do not specifically address the absolute and relative measures of women’s socio-economic status (relative to their male partners) as some past research (Kaukinen, 2004) has done. Yet, we do not simply focus on absolute measures of income, education, and employment. Instead, we suggest that the quality of these measures matters. This has important implications for public policy and intimate partner interventions. Our research has made an important contribution to exploring and identifying how much employment, income, and education it will take for women to be in relationships without violence, or how much it takes to leave a violent relationship. It is a new and interesting question, and we provide an initial descriptive look at this question. Our study provides initial evidence that there needs to be some minimum level of economic resources for women to be protected from (or leave) violent relationships. It is not enough to be employed, it is not enough to have some income, and it is not enough to have some education. Women need to have enough resources to be independent, and this speaks to absolute equality and not relative equality (to their male partner). We therefore conclude that the issue of the absolute and relative nature of these economic variables may be thought of in a very different and likely more important perspective than past work has explored. In buffering the risk of partner violence, it matters less how much economic resources a woman has compared with her male partner if she still does not have enough to be independent from her violent partner.

In addition to the complexity that arises in analyzing the relationship between socio-economic factors and violence, it is also important to note that larger cultural factors may affect the differential risk of violence between these two countries. For example, there has been a long-acknowledged “gun culture” present in the United States. The differences between the two countries are evident in both gun control legislation and statistics. In 2010, 32% of homicides in Canada involved firearms (Statistics Canada, 2010) compared with approximately 68% of homicides in the United States (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2010). Although a small percentage of intimate partner incidents in either country involve the use of firearms, the condoning of violence as a means of protecting persons and property may reflect larger acceptance of violence as a means of conflict resolution. Future research should explore other cultural cross-national differences.

A cross-national approach to an examination of the economic correlates of intimate partner violence has important policy implications. Although violent victimization research in both countries has demonstrated the profound impact of violence, research and policy interventions aimed at reducing these consequences would benefit from a comprehensive and cross-national examination and subsequent identification of the risk (and protective) factors that determine the probability of intimate partner violence. Research and analysis of data from both the United States and Canada, therefore, adds to our knowledge based on the correlates of violence and victimization, directing resources to the interventions with the greatest efficacy for improving victims’ quality of life.

Footnotes

Appendix

Distribution of Intimate Partner Violence Indicators

Canada (n = 7,408)	f (%)	United States (n = 5,499)	f (%)
Physical violence
Throw something	91 (1.2)	Throw something	80 (1.45)
Push or shove	190 (2.6)	Push, grab, or shove	66 (1.20)
		Pull hair	86 (1.56
Slap or hit	78 (1.0)	Slap or hit	92 (1.67)
Kick	51 (0.7)	Kick or bite	51 (0.93)
Choke	26 (0.3	Choke or attempt to drown	55 (1.00
Hit with object	28 (0.4	Hit with object	52 (0.95
Beat up	33 (0.4	Beat up	65 (1.18
Threaten with a weapon	5 (0.1	Threaten with gun	30 (0.55
		Threaten with knife/weapon	25 (0.45
		Use gun	11 (0.20
		Use knife or other weapon	16 (0.29)
		Threaten to kill or harm	10 (0.18)
Forced sex	21 (0.3)	Forced sex	15 (0.27
		Attempted rape	2 (0.04)
		Vaginal/anal penetration^a	10 (0.18)
Emotional violence
Jealous	322 (4.3)	Jealous or possessive	626 (11.38)
Limits family contact	162 (2.2)	Limits contacts with others	196 (3.56)
Demands to know whereabouts	279 (3.8)	Must know whereabouts	432 (7.86)
		Insults in front of others	203 (3.69)
Put downs	309 (4.2)	Makes respondent feel inadequate	328 (5.96)
		Frightens respondent	106 (1.93)
Financial abuse	73 (1.0)	Prevents access to income	128 (2.33)
		Insists on changing residences	64 (1.16)
Destroys property	59 (0.8)

Composite of three questions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Catherine Elizabeth Kaukinen is an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and director of Academic Programs in Criminal Justice. Her research interests include intimate partner violence, risk and protective factors for violent victimization, and the relationship between family structure and adolescent development.

Ráchael A. Powers is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of South Florida. Her main research interests focus on violent victimization, including self-protective behaviors, domestic violence, predictors of assault outcomes (e.g., injury), and bystander intervention.

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