Restraining Orders, Domestic Violence, and Women’s Labor Market and Marriage Outcomes

• In Event: Cycles of Impact: From Reporting to Response in Violence & Justice

Abstract

Domestic violence or Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a pervasive public health and policy issue. One in three women report being abuse in their lifetime and half of all female homicide victims are killed by an intimate partner. Restraining orders—colloquially known as Personal Protection Orders (PPOs)—are one of the most widely used legal tools to protect survivors, yet their effectiveness remains debated. This paper provides the first nationwide, causal analysis of the introduction of PPO legislation in the United States and its effects on violence, labor market outcomes, and family dynamics.

To guide my analysis, I develop a noncooperative household bargaining model. In my model, PPOs increase the cost of committing violence for men and reduce divorce/separation costs for women. PPOs reduce violence both by deterring violent men and by making it easier for women to leave abusive relationships. The model predicts PPOs will reduce IPV, increase women's labor supply and earnings, and have ambiguous effects on divorce, depending on whether the deterrence or separation margins dominate.

To test these predictions, I compile new data on the timing of PPO adoption across all 50 states between 1976 and 1988. I link these data to multiple administrative and survey sources: death certificates from the National Center for Health Statistics, two nationally representative surveys on IPV from the 1970s and 1980s, the National Health Interview Survey, and the Current Population Survey. I use a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits the staggered rollout of PPO legislation.

I have three main findings. First, I find that PPOs reduced IPV: female firearm homicides fell by 15.4%, survey-reported IPV fell by 72%, and the likelihood of emergency room visits among women fell by 40%. Second, while PPOs had no effect on aggregate divorce rates, they altered the composition of married couples. After PPO passage, marriages were more likely to involve low-income husbands and female breadwinners—groups at elevated risk for IPV. This suggests PPOs primarily reduce violence by changing behavior within marriages rather than through dissolution. Finally, I find that married women’s earnings increased by 4.8%, with about one-fifth of this growth explained by sorting into higher-paying occupations.

This paper makes several contributions. First, it is the first to study the nationwide rollout of restraining order legislation and its long-run consequences for women’s safety and economic well-being. Second, it advances theory by embedding PPOs in a household bargaining framework, clarifying how legal institutions shape behavior through deterrence and separation incentives. Third, it contributes to the growing literature on gender-based violence and labor market spillovers—showing that legal protections improve not only physical safety but also economic outcomes. Identifying occupational sorting as a key mechanism highlights a dimension of coercive control not just over whether women work, but over the types of jobs they are allowed to hold. Finally, by identifying which types of marriages persisted post-PPO, the paper sheds light on how protective laws reshape family composition.

Author

• Alvin Christian, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author