Partner Age Gaps and the Risk of Intimate Partner Violence

• In Event: New Developments in Research on IPV and Sexual Abuse in Data-Intense Denmark

Abstract

The risk of experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) is strongly age graded. But data limitations have resulted in few studies on the importance of the age gap between intimate partners for the risk of IPV. We use population data from Denmark on all cohabiting romantic partners (and ex-partners) in 2001-2021 and match them to IPV obtained from police and emergency room records. With these data, we show that partnerships with IPV indeed have larger age gaps than other partnerships, that larger age gaps are associated with higher IPV risks, and that the correlation between the size of the age gap and the risk of IPV does not depend on the direction of the gap (i.e., whether perpetrator is older or younger than victim). Because partnership age gaps generally differ in direction for women younger and older than 35 years of age, we devote special attention to the implications hereof.

Authors

• Lars H. Andersen, ROCKWOOL Foundation

• Melanie Lautrup, ROCKWOOL Foundation

• Sara Wakefield, Rutgers University-Newark

• Christopher Wildeman, Duke University