Employment and the risk of domestic violence

Abstract

In this master’s thesis we study the effect on the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) for women of the emplyoment status of herself, her partner and income to- gether with a set of exogenous sociodemographic factors. In doing so we account for the possible endogeneity of the employment statuses as well as the incomne. We use the most recent data available which originates from the Violence Agains Women survey (VAW) in Spain from 2019. We apply three different estimation methods to study their differences and in order to be able to compare our results to previous stud- ies which used the same approaches. The estimation methods are a linear univariate probability model which we use in order to examine the results without taking possi- ble endogenity into account, a linear two-stage least squares probability model and a non-linear multivariate probability model. Where the latter two models account for endogeneity. Our main findings with respect to the employment statuses are that only the partners employment status plays a major role on reducing the risk of IPV for the woman and only when the woman is also employed and only on the non-physical IPV type. Furthermore, the lowest risk of non-physical IPV appears when both part- ners are employed. Additionally we find that especially the education of a woman and her partner plays a major role in reducing the risk for both types of IPV when successfully finished college.