Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

The Social Cost of Domestic Violence

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by

James A. Bacon
in , ,

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) accounts for more than one in seven violent crimes in the United States. Between 16% and 23% of American women experience IPV while pregnant. Social science researchers have suggested that domestic abuse affects not only the mother-to-be but her unborn children, but the social cost of the problem has been difficult to measure.

A new study by three women, two economists and a health policy researcher, have found a way to compare the outcomes of women subjected to assault while pregnant versus those suffering violence up to 10 months after the estimated due date. They estimate the social cost per assault during pregnancy of nearly $42,000, implying a total annual cost to society of more than $4.25 billion.

“We find that prenatal exposure to assault is associated with an increased likelihood of induced labor, which is likely a response of the healthcare system to injuries sustained by pregnant victims of abuse,” write the authors of “Violence While in Utero: The Impact of Assaults During Pregnancy on Birth Outcomes,” a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

There’s something in this study for everyone. For law-and-order types, the study shifts the prevalent preoccupation with the injustices of mass incarceration to the victims to crime. In addition to the obvious victims, the women subjected to assault, there are invisible victims: the lower birth-rate babies. Oh, and let’s not forget the general public, which winds up paying the medical bills to treat those  babies.

For social justice warriors, the authors remind us that “violence in utero is an important potential channel for intergenerational transmission of poverty.” Indirect costs come from increased childhood disability, decreased in adult income, increased medical costs associated with adult disability, and reductions in life expectancy. “Our results imply that interventions that can reduce violence against pregnant women can have meaningful consequences not just for the women (and their children), but also for the next generation and society as a whole.”

The authors don’t address the oft-noted observation that the American medical system has higher infant mortality rates than other developed countries. But their research sheds light on that phenomenon. The implication is that the higher incidence of infant mortality represents a failure of the U.S. health care system. But perhaps it really represents a higher rate of domestic violence than in other countries.

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11 responses to “The Social Cost of Domestic Violence”

  1. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    Lower birth weight babies? Is that what you meant?

    I guess I should be an expert on this, since I serve on the board of an organization dedicated to preventing child abuse and other forms of domestic violence. The study strikes me as a “well duh”, because of course if a pregnant woman is subjected to violence and stress there are likely to be adverse health outcomes. Putting a dollar figure on all of that is a exercise in futility until we as a society figure out how to change cultural attitudes about violence – and in abusive relationships it can work both ways (but that doesn’t make any difference to the child, born or not yet born.) How do we change those cultural attitudes? There aren’t enough jail cells for the offenders, believe me.

  2. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    “Between 16% and 23% of American women experience IPV while pregnant.”

    If true, these statistics are a terrible indictment of our culture, its rot and depravity.

    But why should we be surprised?

    For all, but the elite in this country (say the top 10% of population), the anchors of family, education, community, civil society and religion, are now in a free fall, failing our youth while poisoning them and their society, and us, too.

    Our sexual revolution and its culture since the 1960s, its corruption of most everything we touch and who we are as human beings, has turned many of us into aliens alive and alone into an air-conditioned nightmare, with guide or direction, or sustenance.

    Most hard hit are our young men and women, barely alive in ever expanding segments of our population, whether it be white, black, or brown.

    Now, even the Catholic Church, the anchor and inspiration for millions upon million of our immigrants since the early 19th century, the largest migration in world history, that great Church, the bulkhead of faith, hope, and charity hundreds of millions, is itself now reeling from the cesspool of our culture.

    Meanwhile, our schools and universities peddle nonsense while stripping our children of their culture, and their future.

    Imagine our universities peddling the hook-up culture and rape epidemics to our kids, selling this cultural trash like a narcotic. Going on for decades, it has now untethered the sexes of our youth from all reality of themselves and the world they must live in, alienating one sex from the other, and now multiple others, too, both real and imagined.

    Imagine now too what has happened with the Catholic Church. The worlds oldest institution, holding together for 2000 years, now reeling, threatening to now fly apart, collapse in a heap at our feet, in America. It is all incredible.

    1. Steve Haner Avatar
      Steve Haner

      Nothing Martin Luther didn’t see centuries ago….

      1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
        Reed Fawell 3rd

        Surely, Martin Luther discerned and gave witness to enormous corruption within the Catholic Church, its priesthood, doctrine, traditions, practice that had built up over centuries to feather the nests of the prelates in control. Perhaps he also focused on the most threatening issues here now at play. But given the terrible scope and depravity of the facts of what has been going on “for decades” within this particular scandal, I don’t know the answer to that question. Do you, Steve?

        If the facts at play here are true, I suspect these new threats are beyond any the American Catholic Church has faced in my memory. Knowledgeable Catholics here have asserted that this scandal suggests that perhaps somewhere between 25% and 50% of all American Catholic priests today might be homosexual, and that a very substantial number of these priests are practicing homosexuals. Indeed, that the rate has been found to be quite high proportionally in some particular venues and locales, some seminaries, or some urban dioceses for example.

        This raises a great array of new threats. And they are against an already terrible weakened American Church establishment. Here is only one. Practicing homosexuality under Church teaching (theology) is “a mortal sin, a gravely sinful act, which can lead to damnation if a person does not repent of the sin before death, a sin that leads to the sinner’s separation from God’s saving grace, not to mention from the church and its priesthood. And these are deemed gravely sinful acts irrespective of their occurrence between consenting adults, whether between priests, a priest and a man, (much less a priest and a women, including a nun). And when a priest so engages a child, by force or otherwise, these issues ratchet ever higher, in whole varieties ways given the facts in this latest Pennsylvania scandal. And all this will play out against the current hotly contested and hostile political climate in America regarding gay rights.

        Not to mention:

        The shortage of priests and nuns in the US Church, and the faithful in US pews, before this latest tragedy exploded. And of course the Church finances are in shambles in many locales. and now the attacks on Church funds and assets will only spiral far higher, while public opinion and support for the Church will most likely plummet.

        Of course, the Catholic Church has seen far worse. I suspect it will come out on the other side far stronger than before.

        1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
          Reed Fawell 3rd

          Perhaps its time to reread Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, how “Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.”

          Then match Graham Green’s masterwork with Cormac McCarthy’s, Blood Meridian. Try to imagine the difference between the worlds that each novel creates, and the void the whiskey priest fills in his. That different might put the reader on his own Road to Damascus.

          1. Steve Haner Avatar
            Steve Haner

            Yeah, I was probably too young the first time I read some of Graham Greene’s books, including that one. I bet he ages well.

            My earlier point about Luther is he recognized the danger of the celibacy requirement, and dumped it along with much of the other baggage. That it is still the rule strikes me as a the height of stupidity. Let the priests marry and let the married become priests.

          2. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
            Reed Fawell 3rd

            Steve, thanks for getting back to me on that. I suspect Martin Luther saw the same homosexual issues the Church faces in current Penn. Crisis. It was likely out much more out in the open then in many church venues, Human nature does not change,

            The big battle, I suspect, will be over the church’s stance on homosexual priests.

            Will Catholics become Episcopalians? And then what?

            That issue will split the Church apart. Perhaps now it soon will face a second Martin Luther moment. The serious Catholics are having a Wake Up Call, a Come to Jesus Call, big time over these revelations.

  3. dadzrites Avatar
    dadzrites

    False allegations of domestic violence cost the public $20 BILLION annually. 1 in 5 divorces involve allegations of domestic violence. Of those, 80% of the cases or 16% of divorces involve FALSE ALLEGATIONS of domestic violence. See, file:///C:/Users/Bruce/Downloads/SAVE-Cost-of-False-Allegations%20(5).pdf; http://www.mediaradar.org/press_release_20080714.php; http://www.mediaradar.org/media_fact_sheet.php

  4. dadzrites Avatar
    dadzrites

    REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS:
    AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
    Martin S. Fiebert –http://web.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
    SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 286 scholarly investigations: 221 empirical studies and 65 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 371,600.

    1. Steve Haner Avatar
      Steve Haner

      Again, who is hitting whom makes no difference to the child (who grows up thinking that behavior is normal.)

  5. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    So… all of this is the result of the collapse of morals in the 1960’s in the USA? Au Contraire!

    umm… take a look at other countries – where women have traditionally been treated essentially as owned property for generations… that’s not a collapse of morals in one country…. sorry… it’s a much bigger problem .. and only in Countries that are actually quantifying it – or trying to – do really start to increase our awareness of the scope of the problem.

    Yes women beat up guys also… and certainly perpetrate psychological attacks but in terms of physical violence – there is no contest… women routinely get savaged by guys – not just in the US, not just the 60’s but around the world , in many countries (if not every one) for generations…….

    Some cultures, (albeit some religions) for some reason, seem to have more readily accepted it as “normal” than others.. and as time goes by – especially in advanced economy nations – it’s recognized for what it is – and condemned and reviled.

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