Economic Distress, Community Context, and Intimate Violence in the United States, 1988 and 1994
Description
Because of their restricted access to financial resources,
couples undergoing economic distress are more likely to live in
disadvantaged neighborhoods than are financially well-off couples. The
link between individual economic distress and community-level economic
disadvantage raises the possibility that these two conditions may
combine or interact in important ways to influence the risk of
intimate violence against women. This study examined whether the
effect of economic distress on intimate violence was stronger in
disadvantaged or advantaged neighborhoods or was unaffected by
neighborhood conditions. This project was a secondary analysis of data
drawn from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and
Households (NSFH) and from the 1990 United States Census. From the
NSFH, the researchers abstracted data on conflict and violence among
couples, as well as data on their economic resources and well-being,
the composition of the household in which the couple lived, and a
large number of socio-demographic characteristics of the sample
respondents. From the 1990 Census, the researchers abstracted
tract-level data on the characteristics of the census tracts in which
the NSFH respondents lived. Demographic information contains each
respondent's race, sex, age, education, income, relationship status at
Wave 1, marital status at Wave 1, cohabitation status, and number of
children under 18. Using variables abstracted from both Wave 1 and
Wave 2 of the NSFH and the 1990 Census, the researchers constructed
new variables, including degree of financial worry and satisfaction
for males and females, number of job strains, number of debts, changes
in debts between Wave 1 and Wave 2, changes in income between Wave 1
and Wave 2, if there were drinking and drug problems in the household,
if the female was injured, number of times the female was victimized,
the seriousness of the violence, if the respondent at Wave 2 was still
at the Wave 1 address, and levels of community disadvantage.