When women's health improves, domestic violence diminishes
The results, featured in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper and highlighted in the bureau's latest Bulletin on Aging and Health, demonstrate for the first time how improving women's health can reduce cases of abuse by roughly 10 percent. "When these women who thought they were going to die realized this new treatment gave them many years to live, they faced stronger incentives to avoid abusive partners," said lead author Nicholas Papageorge, a Johns Hopkins economist. Previous research has shown a connection between poor health and domestic abuse, of which there are an estimated 4.5 million cases a year just in the United States. But until now researchers say no one has looked at whether improving women's health could change their likelihood of suffering domestic violence. To test this, Papageorge and his co-authors returned to a singular moment in health care history, the introduction in 1996 of HAART, or highly active antiretroviral the...