Year: 2017
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This paper analyzes the causal relationship between unemployment and intimate-partner violence(IPV) introducing a gender-identity approach. I argue that local social predominance of differentfamily structures (stem vs nuclear) in the past shaped distinct present cultural norms regardingthe appropriate role of men and women, and that as a result IPV responds differently to changesin relative unemployment rates of men vs women. Coresidence of younger couples with in-laws instem families in the past reduced the burden of household work, allowing a higher contribution ofthe younger wife to nondomestic work. In nuclear families, conversely, wives activities were moreconfined to the domestic sphere. I construct an exogenous measure of unemployment and find heterogeneousimpacts: for individuals living in territories with a nuclear-family tradition, a decreasein female unemployment relative to male unemployment increases IPV, potentially because men feeltheir traditional breadwinner role threatened. These effects are offset, and sometimes even reversed,for individuals living in provinces where the stem family was socially predominant in the past. Ipropose a new rationale for IPV in which violence is a way to reinstate the loss of utility generatedby what some men perceive as an insult, and provide evidence in favor of this novel explanation.
Author: Ana Tur-Prats
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions
Award: G2860315117
OpenAlex ID: W2615928972