The Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence for Women’s Mental Health and Material Hardship

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  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 1. Bullying, Family Violence, and Mental Health

Abstract

In the third empirical chapter, I examine how IPV impacts women’s subsequent
mental health and material hardship, using data from the Fragile Families and Child
Wellbeing Study. Though the associations between IPV, mental illness, and material
hardship are well established, few studies on these topics have used broadly representative data sets or produced robust causal estimates. Therefore, it is difficult to
know if long-term negative outcomes associated with IPV victimization are due to IPV or
are primarily driven by selection. I address concerns about selection bias by employing
propensity score matching models, and I find that for disadvantaged urban women, IPV
victimization is associated with higher levels of depression and material hardship two
years later. This evidence draws attention to the impact that IPV can have on multiple
domains of women’s lives, and underscores the need for further work on how the effects
of IPV play out over the life course.

Author

• Sara Bastomski, Urban Institute