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Job Displacement, Unemployment Benefits and Domestic Violence

Sonia Bhalotra¹; Diogo G. C. Britto²; Paolo Pinotti³; Breno Sampaio⁴

¹ University of Warwick, CEPR, IFS, IZA, CAGE, MISOC, IEA , · ² University of Milan-Bicocca, Bocconi University (BAFFI Center, CLEAN Unit for the Economic Analysis of Crime) , · ³ Bocconi University (BAFFI Center, CLEAN Unit for the Economic Analysis of Crime), CEPR, Italy · ⁴ Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Bocconi University (BAFFI Center, CLEAN Unit for the Economic Analysis of Crime), GAPPE/UFPE, IZA ,

Abstract We estimate impacts of male job loss, female job loss, and male unemployment benefits on domestic violence (DV) in Brazil. We merge individual-level employment and welfare registers with different measures of DV: judicial cases brought to criminal courts, the use of public shelters by victims, and mandatory DV notifications by health providers. Leveraging mass layoffs for identification, we first show that both male and female job loss, independently, lead to large, and pervasive increases in DV. Using a regression discontinuity design, we then show that access to unemployment benefits does not reduce DV while benefits are being paid, and it leads to higher DV risk once benefits expire. Our findings can be explained by the negative income shock brought by job loss and by increased exposure of victims to perpetrators, as partners tend to spend more time together after displacement. Although unemployment benefits partially offset the income drop following job loss, they reinforce the exposure shock as they increase unemployment duration. Since our results cannot be explained by prominent DV theories, we propose a simple model formalizing these mechanisms.

DOI

10.1093/restud/rdaf004

Volume

92 (6)

Pages

3649-3681

Language

en

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