The Effects of Adolescent and Early Adulthood Intimate Partner Violence on Adult Socioeconomic Well-being

ABSTRACT

Violent victimization disrupts lives and has the potential to undermine socioeconomic well-being. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a particular concern because rates rise during adolescence to high rates in early adulthood. Prior literature has been hampered by specialized samples, short time-periods, and limited theoretical development. We draw from theorizing on victimization in the life course and the stress process model to analyze the Add Health data covering a twelve-year period. We find pathways from adolescent and early adult IPV are associated with reduced adult socioeconomic well-being. This provides evidence for the enduring effects of adversity on life course inequality.

KEYWORDS:

• Intimate partner violence
• socioeconomic well-being
• life course
• inequality

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by funds from the Faculty Research Award Program (B) at the University at Albany, SUNY. This research utilizes the Add Health data. Add Health is directed by Robert A. Hummer and funded by the National Institute on Aging cooperative agreements [U01 AG071448] (Hummer), [U01 AG071450] (Aiello and Hummer) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Waves I-V data are from the Add Health Program Project, grant [P01 HD31921] (Harris) from Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Add Health was designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Agency refers to individuals’ abilities as “active and creative agents” in their environments (Gecas 2003:369). Researchers have measured it as self-efficacy (Bandura 1982; Gecas 1989), planfulness (Clausen 1991), mastery or personal control (Pearlin et al. 1981; Ross and Mirowsky 2013), and anticipation of life course outcomes (Hitlin and Johnson 2015).

2. Agency is conceptualized as mastery or personal control (seeing oneself in control of important things), and self-efficacy (belief in one’s abilities to perform specific actions) (Pearlin et al. 1981; Ross and Mirowsky 2013).

3. Women experience more severe forms of IPV and greater injury, though men are victimized (Black et al. 2011; Tjaden and Thoennes 2000). Individuals with higher income are also at risk (Office for Victims of Crime 2018).

4. Attrition analyses comparing our analytic sample with the full sample completing all four waves showed no significant differences in control or substantive variables.

5. We explored measuring each type of IPV as separate observed indicators. However, correlations were as high as .5 in adolescence and .7 in early adulthood contributing to modeling problems and poor model fit.

6. We examined a broader measure that respondents “can pretty much determine what will happen in your life” as part of a latent variable with chances graduating from college. But they did not load well, and the measurement model had poor fit. We then examined them as two independent variables, allowing for correlation, but the model fit was poor.

7. Over 81% strongly wanted to go to college with 11% neutral and 8% not interested.

8. We explored including additional items capturing different aspects of depressive symptoms at wave 3, but the measurement model had poor fit.

9. We explored age differences grouped as 11–15 and 16 +. The two groups were similar, so we included all ages together in the analysis.

10. Females experienced significantly higher levels of one type of adolescent IPV and three types of early adulthood IPV. However, our group SEM analysis produced few significant gender differences in the effects of IPV on socioeconomic well-being.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joanne M. Kaufman

Joanne M. Kaufman is an associate professor of sociology and joint faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY.  Her research interests are focused on crime and victimization in the life course; intimate partner violence; inequalities of race/ethnicity, gender, and crime/victimization; and criminological theory.

Christine M. Walsh

Christine M. Walsh is a senior data scientist with a PhD in sociology from the University at Albany, SUNY. Her research is focused on intimate partner violence, sex offenders, implicit bias, machine learning, and advanced quantitative methods.