Marriage As a Protective Factor Against Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence From Latin America

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong studied 5-year medical records from the emergency department of two local public hospitals and found that cohabiting women were approximately 2.1 times more likely than married women to present physical injuries. Research has consistently found that married women experience less intimate partner violence (IPV) than cohabiting women. However, most existing studies focus only on the incidence of IPV as a binary indicator. Another gap in previous literature is that the severity of that exposure and the different types of violence have been largely ignored. And a subject that has so far remained nearly missing from previous literature is the mechanism behind the complex relationship between marital status and IPV. A recent study—that I coauthored with Mariana Leguisamo—begins to address these issues for Latin American countries.

IPV against women is widespread in every Latin American country, while cohabitating unions have experienced a substantial increase and are particularly common in the region. The consequences of IPV are well recognized, including acute injuries, depression, anxiety, being suicidal, and other psychological distress, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and a wide range of chronic health problems. These features highlight the need for more comprehensive preparation for healthcare professionals involved in identifying and addressing IPV, as a recent study observed in their literature review on gender-based violence in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Violence against women also poses intergenerational consequences: when women experience violence, their children suffer. Growing evidence suggests that when children witness or suffer violence directly, they may be at increased risk of becoming aggressors or victims in adulthood. As a report from the Pan American Health Organization states: 

In addition to the human costs, research shows that violence against women drains health and justice sector budgets with expenditures for treating survivors and prosecuting perpetrators. Costs also result from productivity losses and absenteeism. Studies from the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that the impact of IPV on gross domestic product from women’s lower earnings alone was between 1.6% in Nicaragua and 2.0% in Chile. 

In this Latin American context, our study utilizes the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which are nationally-representative household surveys that provide data for women ages 15-49 years old, for a wide range of indicators in the areas of population, health, and nutrition. The surveys include eight questions about different types of severe physical violence, four about less severe physical violence, five about sexual violence, and 30 about emotional violence. 

Since selection effects may play a powerful role (women are less likely to marry violent men), we explore previous literature to select the main variables that might be promoting violent behaviors. There has been a good deal of speculation. First, from a theory of power within the couple, those with less education and lower income are candidates to suffer greater violence. So, education and income were key variables we included. Second, older women are more likely to have experienced violence for a long time or to be in current violent relationships, which is why we included age as a key variable. Third, the social learning theory of violence suggests that girls who witness or experience violence may learn to expect violence in relationships and are therefore more likely to find themselves in a violent adult relationship. Hence, we use data from a DHS survey question about the violence that the respondent's mother may have suffered from her partner.  

Research has consistently found that married women experience less intimate partner violence (IPV) than cohabiting women. 

We find that married women suffered less violence than cohabiting women for each singular type of violence, even after controlling for education, age, locality, wealth, and personal violence history. We also explore why this is.

We propose a novel mechanism: marriage might provide a framework that fosters investment in the quality of the couple's relationship, thus preventing IPV. The protective role may be driven by the fact that marriage and cohabitation have, over the years, become relatively similar in several ways except for the investment in the quality of the couple’s relationship. Risk-averse people—i.e. those reluctant to take any risk—save not only to smooth consumption but also to keep a buffer stock if future outcomes are unfavorable. 

Marriage provides a framework that seems to foster investment: married couples are faced with greater restrictions to marriage dissolution. A married couple completely shares the risk and creates a kind of family insurance, which decreases the need for precautionary saving, so they show greater investment rates. The time devoted to helping the partner, caring for, educating, and raising their children represents investments in time that are tremendously worthwhile in terms of keeping a good relationship.

Employing a nationally representative survey about time use, our study shed light on the role of investments in the couple's relationship quality for preventing IPV. Our results show that married people invest more time in household tasks in comparison to cohabiting individuals for nearly all the 15 tasks surveyed (housework, childcare, electrical and sanitary repairs, child transportation to school/hospital, etc.); married couples also seem to act more cooperatively, investing more time in their relationship itself. This may help to explain the lower rate of violence that married women suffered, but this mechanism deserves more research. 

For nearly every one of the 47 types of intimate partner violence reported in the DHS surveys, marriage is associated with a lower incidence of IPV suffered by women. In fact, marriage is not associated with more violence in any DHS question. Our study sheds light on the role of investments in relationship quality and encourages further research not only on reactive interventions targeted at distressed couples with greater relationship needs but also on services aimed at preventing conflicts within healthy couples.       

Alejandro Cid is Associate Professor of Economics at the Universidad de Montevideo, and Dean of the School of Business & Economics at the Universidad de Montevideo.