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2. Intimate Partner Violence Is . . .

An Economic Problem

Intimate partner violence imposes huge costs on the U.S. economy. Poverty and intimate partner violence are strongly correlated. Low-income women are much more likely to experience intimate partner violence, and under- and unemployed men more likely to perpetrate it. Economic instability prevents women from leaving abusive relationships. Economic abuse is a widely recognized form of intimate partner violence, experienced by the majority of people subjected to abuse. Intimate partner violence is affected and exacerbated by structural economic forces. A strong case can be made for confronting intimate partner violence as an economic problem.

THE COSTS OF INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE

While it is impossible to pinpoint an exact amount, intimate partner violence costs the U.S. economy as much as $67 billion annually. That figure includes expenditures by local government (in payments for police, medical, and social services) and losses to individuals (for decreased productivity, health care, destruction of and damage to property, and diminished quality of life). Injuries resulting from intimate partner violence total approximately $5 billion per year in medical expenses and lost productivity.

People subjected to abuse, not surprisingly, bear the majority of the economic burden. Health-care costs are 19 percent higher for women subjected to intimate partner violence; people subjected to abuse spend as much as $1,775 more yearly on health care than those who have not been abused.¹ Each time an employed woman is assaulted, she averages seven days of absence from work and needs $800 in medical and mental health care.² Women subjected to abuse report significantly worse physical health than other women and are three times as likely to experience a mental health disorder.³ People subjected to abuse also earn less. Women may lose as much as $18 million annually in earnings as a result of intimate partner violence.⁴ Intimate partner violence contributes to structural economic inequality as well; violence against women may contribute to the gender pay gap, for example.

Seeking protection from intimate partner violence results in economic penalties and contributes to income instability. Contact with police can lead to loss of housing, employment, and welfare benefits. Participating in prosecution imposes economic harm on those who are forced to miss work for court dates. Women lose up to $1,018 in income the year after they petition civil courts for protection from abuse and never recoup that income.⁵ Studies likely underestimate the true costs of intimate partner violence for people subjected to abuse. A comprehensive estimate of the costs would have to include “reduced wages, work hours, job experience, employment stability, and earnings; increased food insecurity and trouble paying rent or utility bills; chronic individual and intergenerational cycling between work and welfare and in and out of abusive relationships; and what researchers term ‘dangerous dependencies’ on abusive men for job supports such as childcare and transportation.”⁶

Employers also incur significant expenses as a result of intimate partner violence. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that intimate partner violence costs employers $5.8 billion annually in health care and lost productivity. Women subjected to abuse use approximately $2,000 more in benefits than others enrolled in health plans.⁷ Offenders’ tardiness and absenteeism also impose economic burdens on employers. Seventy-five percent of men convicted of intimate partner violence reported missing at least one day of work as a result of intimate partner violence. Forty-six percent were late, 39 percent left early, and 17 percent attributed mistakes on the job to abuse. Offenders also use work equipment to stalk and harass their partners, expenses borne by employers. Seventy-eight percent of the men used workplace resources either to monitor or to threaten their partners; 48 percent reported trouble concentrating at work.⁸ Men who use violence were more likely to make mistakes at work and to report bad health.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMICS

AND INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE

The early antiviolence movement described intimate partner violence as a problem that plagued women without regard to race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class. But low-income women are disproportionately represented among people subjected to abuse. As many as two-thirds of low-income women are subjected to intimate partner violence.⁹ The lower a woman’s income, the more likely she is to experience intimate partner violence: women who are at or below the poverty level are subjected to abuse almost twice as often as women at 101 percent to 200 percent of the poverty level.¹⁰ Women with household incomes of less than $10,000 per year experience intimate partner violence four times more often than women with annual household incomes of $50,000 or more.¹¹ Women with household incomes of $7,500 or less annually are subjected to intimate partner violence nearly seven times as often as women with household incomes of $75,000.¹² Debt is also related to rates of intimate partner violence. Women with significant debt are 75 percent more likely to be abused than women with little debt.¹³ According to researchers Lisa Goodman, Katya Fels Smyth, Angela M. Borges, and Rachel Singer, “[H]ousehold income level is one of the most, if not the most, significant correlates of partner violence.”¹⁴ Intimate partner violence is particularly prevalent among women on welfare. Between 40 percent and 60 percent of the welfare population has been subjected to intimate partner violence at some time.¹⁵

Intimate partner violence is also associated with indicators of material deprivation: food insufficiency, lack of stable housing, and utility disconnection, for example. Women subjected to abuse are more likely to be materially deprived than women who have not been abused. Upon leaving abusive relationships, some women struggle financially, finding it difficult to meet their basic needs; material deprivation may continue for as long as three years after the abuse has ended. Sophie’s story is illustrative. After Sophie obtained a protective order, her partner, Henry, “emptied the entire apartment, turned off the utilities, cancelled the lease (which was only in his name), and moved to another state. ‘So there I was,” Sophie recalled, “’in an empty apartment, eight months pregnant, with a toddler, with no job.” Over time, Sophie’s economic status deteriorated. “I couldn’t keep a job. I’d try to get a job and I’d lose it because I couldn’t handle myself at work. . . . I had no money, I had no food, I had no brain, I had no time, I had no friends, I had no church.” Court appearances cost Sophie job after job, and her inability to keep a job prevented her from seeking full custody of her children after losing them to Henry.¹⁶

Women subjected to abuse earn less than other women, with those effects beginning as early as adolescence. Being abused in a teen dating relationship depresses women’s adult earnings, a deficit attributable to their lower educational attainment. Women subjected to abuse earn $3,900 less annually than women who had not experienced violence¹⁷ and are paid 76 cents per hour less than nonabused women.¹⁸ Women who sought protective orders saw their wages decrease 53 cents per hour after doing so.¹⁹ The more severe the violence to which they are subjected, the less women earn. Women may also experience material deprivation because programs for women subjected to abuse are sometimes reluctant to provide services to very poor women, particularly if they are considered deviant in some way (for example, if they are homeless or substance users).²⁰

Intimate partner violence is more frequent and more severe for low-income women and is particularly acute among low-income women of color, for reasons that may be tied to neighborhood disadvantage. A number of studies have found that intimate partner violence is more prevalent and more serious among couples who live in low-income neighborhoods, with rates of intimate partner violence highest among those in the lowest-income locations. Women who live in economically disadvantaged communities and are struggling financially are at greatest risk of intimate partner violence.²¹The overrepresentation of people of color in economically stressed neighborhoods likely accounts for the high rates of intimate partner violence among low-income women of color.

There is a reciprocal relationship between intimate partner violence and neighborhood disadvantage. Intimate partner violence is more prevalent in low-income neighborhoods, and couples experiencing intimate partner violence are more likely to be economically vulnerable and to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Both couples who are financially overextended and those who believe themselves to be financially strained are at greater risk for intimate partner violence. Moving to a better resourced neighborhood does not eliminate the risk. Economically vulnerable couples always have higher rates of intimate partner violence than those with fewer economic constraints (as much as three times higher, according to one study), regardless of where they reside. The combination of neighborhood disadvantage and subjective feelings of economic strain is particularly problematic, however; 14 percent of couples living in low-income neighborhoods and reporting acute economic stress experience intimate partner violence, as opposed to 7 percent of high-strain couples living in advantaged neighborhoods. The relationship between community income levels and intimate partner violence is not a function of who lives in low-income neighborhoods or the individual characteristics of the men living in those neighborhoods. The relationship is instead a result of the neighborhood context—living in a low-income neighborhood in and of itself increases the risk of intimate partner violence.²²

ECONOMIC ABUSE

Economic abuse is defined as “behaviors that control a woman’s ability to acquire, use, and maintain economic resources, thus threatening her economic security and potential for self-sufficiency.”²³ Economic abuse includes economic control (blocking the acquisition of assets, controlling how resources are distributed, and monitoring how they are used), economic exploitation (depleting women’s resources), and employment sabotage.

Most women who are subjected to other forms of abuse are also economically abused. Estimates of the prevalence of economic abuse range from 68 percent in a 2004 study of a shelter-based population²⁴ to 100 percent of women receiving services from a community-based antiviolence organization in a 2015 study.²⁵ Ninety-four percent of participants in a financial literacy program for women subjected to abuse had experienced economic abuse.²⁶ Between 79 percent and 92 percent reported economic control, 79 percent experienced economic exploitation, and between 78 percent and 88 percent had their employment sabotaged. Most women report that their partners are responsible for their economic problems.²⁷

Economic abuse takes a number of forms. Economic control includes restricting or preventing access to joint bank accounts or other sources of income, refusing to contribute financially, forcing a person to make deposits into an abusive partner’s bank account, withholding funds or providing a strict allowance, denying access to financial information, demanding to know how money is spent, or making economic decisions without consulting a partner. When Darlene asked her husband for money to buy shoes for her children and grandchildren, for example, her husband responded, “I’ve decided that this is my money. I’ll do what I want to do with my money. I don’t have to give you any money, spend money on you, I don’t have to pay the bills ‘cause I don’t live here. . . . And by the way, I took your name off the checking account and the savings account. So that’s it. If you want some money . . . if you think you need some money, then you need to ask me for some money. And if I have it I’ll give you half of what you ask for.”²⁸ Increases in economic control often correlate with decreases in the self-sufficiency of the person subjected to abuse.

Economic exploitation includes paying bills late, spending money intended to pay rent or bills, stealing money, creating costs by destroying property, failing to pay taxes or putting tax liability in a partner’s name, or generating debt. Kara was forced to declare bankruptcy when her partner ruined her credit; Louise lost her home after her partner insisted that she add him to the title, then took out a second mortgage on the home, which he failed to pay.²⁹ Sixteen percent of the women living in Humboldt Park, Chicago, reported economic control and exploitation in a 1999 study: their partners withheld money from them, made them ask for money, or took their money.³⁰ Note that this study surveyed all women living in the area—not solely those who reported intimate partner violence.

Coerced debt—amassing and using consumer debt to exercise control over a partner—is a particularly pernicious type of economic abuse with long-term consequences for people subjected to abuse. Coerced debt can take a number of forms: obtaining credit through the use of fraud or duress; secretly taking out credit cards using a partner’s name; pressuring or forcing a partner to sign loan documents; tricking a partner into relinquishing rights to property, such as a family home; refusing to allow a partner access to credit; and borrowing knowing the partner will be liable for the debt. Coerced debt may not be discovered until after people subjected to abuse have left their relationships, when the debt is already delinquent or is close to being delinquent. Bankruptcy filings provide an interesting perspective on this problem. Data from the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project indicate that 18 percent of the married or cohabiting women who filed for bankruptcy were subjected to intimate partner abuse in the year prior to filing, suggesting that coerced debt plays a significant role in bankruptcy filings for women with partners. Coerced debt is problematic not just because of the immediate financial hardship it imposes on people subjected to abuse (which can include losing assets, like homes, that are used for collateral), but also because those debts are recorded on credit reports, which are used by everyone from employers to landlords and utility companies to determine creditworthiness. The inability to secure employment, housing, or utilities because of a poor credit rating can mean longer stays in shelter, returning to abusive relationships, or not leaving those relationships at all.³¹

Abuse can significantly impair a woman’s ability to work. Although women subjected to abuse are no less likely to be currently employed than other women, they are more likely to have experienced past unemployment and high job turnover. Women subjected to intimate partner violence are much less likely to maintain work over time than other women. Intimate partner violence decreases women’s annual hours worked by more than 10 percent.³²

Women subjected to abuse report being late and absent from work more often and have greater difficulty maintaining long-term employment.³³ Intimate partner violence reduces women’s job stability by an average of three months. This lack of job stability can hamper a woman’s ability to accrue enough time in a job to earn employment-related benefits, including retirement accounts, health insurance, sick days, and vacation time. The effects of intimate partner violence on employment stability can last for up to three years after the abuse has ended. Fifty-two percent of women in a support group for intimate partner violence said that they were not able to positively change their employment status after the abuse ended.³⁴ Postseparation abuse, stalking, and harassment, which can continue long after women leave abusive relationships, also negatively affect women’s ability to work.

Between 24 percent and 52 percent of women subjected to abuse have lost a job as a result of intimate partner violence; between 44 percent and 60 percent have been reprimanded at work for behavior related to intimate partner violence.³⁵ Intimate partner violence can also cause women to scale down their employment aspirations; about half of the women in one survey reported more modest hopes for employment after separating from their abusive partners.³⁶ Abuse deters some women from working altogether. “I want to work, but I’m afraid. I have gotten messages from my girlfriends. They said he said if he sees me he’s going to kill me. You had better watch your back and all other kinds of stuff, and believe me he’ll do it.”³⁷

Abusive partners prevent people from getting the education they need to qualify for work, finding work, and actually working. People who abuse may damage or destroy work clothes, employment related documents, and other needed items. They inflict visible injuries that make it impossible to go to work. Women are stalked or harassed before, during, and after work. People who abuse fail to provide promised transportation or child care, interfere with a partner’s education and training, and spread lies about their partners to their employers (that they are using drugs or experiencing mental illness, for example). Welfare recipients regularly report being harassed by their partners at work. The majority of welfare recipients have been late to work, left early, or missed work as a result of intimate partner violence. Georgia’s partner was so jealous that he “didn’t want me to work or meet people outside the home. . . . He would call or come to the job or be there when I got off. He would demand that I come over, would call and threaten the boss where I worked. . . . He stole a VCR from [the place] where I was working.” Georgia was fired as a result of her partner’s behavior.³⁸ Although some employers have workplace policies to assist employees subjected to abuse, others are unable or unwilling to provide workers with the job adaptations they need to be safe. Fear of her abusive partner prompted Rachel to resign from her job as a systems analyst. Rachel’s shift ended at night, and “[t]here’s no way I was going to walk through the parking lot at 10:00 at night,” particularly given that the security guards were not willing to walk with her.³⁹

Economic abuse “is the ultimate anti-response to female financial autonomy.”⁴⁰ It prevents people subjected to abuse from establishing economic security and self-sufficiency. Anxiety about financial instability looms larger than safety concerns for some people subjected to abuse. As Yolanda explained, her fear of losing her only asset, her home, kept her in an abusive relationship for years: “I thought about our property . . . the house we were living in . . . if I left I would lose the property. . . . And I always wanted it for my kids, so they could have it. . . . I thought at least I would have that for retirement.”⁴¹ Economic dependency traps some people in abusive relationships. Others leave their relationships without access to money, “unbanked,” with damaged credit, large debts, and few material resources.

HOUSING

The inability to find and keep housing is among the most significant economic problems associated with intimate partner violence. Without stable housing, people are more vulnerable to intimate partner violence. Women subjected to abuse make up a substantial percentage of the homeless population, in part because of the barriers they face in obtaining and maintaining housing.

The difficulty of securing stable housing has long been recognized as a critical problem for people subjected to abuse. In VAWA’s legislative history, lawmakers noted that women subjected to abuse “often lack steady income, credit history, landlord references, and a current address, all of which are necessary to obtain long-term permanent housing.”⁴²

People who have been subjected to economic abuse may lack sufficient resources to cover the up-front costs associated with renting. Although some public housing complexes prioritize housing for people subjected to abuse, most have long wait-lists, making them impractical solutions for people needing immediate housing. Moreover, while waiting for a property to become available, people may relocate or change their phone numbers, making them difficult to contact; if the housing agency can’t reach them when a spot opens up, the agency will move on to the next person seeking housing. Leaving rental housing unexpectedly in response to a crisis has serious financial ramifications and can result in financial penalties for early lease termination, loss of security deposit, or eviction proceedings.

Having an eviction on one’s record creates tremendous barriers to finding new housing. People subjected to abuse may have been evicted as a result of excessive noise, criminal activity on the property, or because a partner has leased the apartment in the person’s name but refused to pay the rent. Landlords routinely screen the credit and eviction histories and criminal records of potential renters. Broken leases and past evictions hurt the credit and rental histories of people subjected to abuse, making it much more difficult to qualify for both private and public housing. A 2008 study found that applicants for housing in Washington, DC, who had been subjected to abuse or were seeking housing on behalf of someone subjected to abuse were given harsher lease terms and conditions than other applicants (56 percent) or denied housing outright (9 percent).⁴³

Once people subjected to abuse have found housing, they face a number of barriers to keeping that housing. One particularly problematic practice is the use of nuisance property laws against people subjected to abuse. Nuisance property laws allow police to penalize landlords for their tenants’ behavior. Imagine that the police have received multiple calls from a tenant for assistance with intimate partner violence. Nuisance property laws permit police and prosecutors to require landlords to self-police their properties to keep law enforcement from having to repeatedly respond to calls, using the threat of fines and license revocations to compel landlords to act. In Saint Louis, for example, prosecutors threatened to fine landlords between one hundred dollars and five hundred dollars for each violation of the nuisance property law, and, if that failed to stop calls to 911, to board up the property. Landlords who aid law enforcement must provide police or prosecutors with plans for abating the nuisance to avoid being penalized. Landlords often include evictions or the threat of eviction in those plans and use those threats to prevent tenants from continuing to seek assistance from the police.⁴⁴

Nearly a third of the nuisance citations issued to landlords in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2008 and 2009 involved intimate partner violence. That abuse included hitting, strangling, beating, and throwing bleach in a partner’s face. Forty-four percent of the incidents involved physical abuse, and 14 percent involved a weapon. For those two years, a Milwaukee landlord received a nuisance citation involving intimate partner violence every five days; those citations disproportionately involved female victims, male offenders, and African American neighborhoods. Eighty-three percent of landlords responded to the nuisance citations with either threats to evict or formal and informal evictions. After a woman called 911 when her abusive boyfriend appeared on her porch, for example, her landlord sent her the following letter: “Because the numerous calls from this address, the police has [sic] identified the property as a nuisance property. . . . This is your notice to cease this behavior and to cure these problems. . . . If these activities continue, your lease will be terminated.” The landlord informed police of his intention to terminate the resident’s lease should she make another call to law enforcement. The Milwaukee Police Department accepted that plan. Four months later Milwaukee police informed the landlord that the problems with the tenant had continued; the landlord evicted the tenant. The landlord submitted the eviction letter to police, who responded, “Plan Accepted! Please ensure eviction takes place.” Another landlord sent a letter to Milwaukee police explaining that “we are evicting Sheila M. . . . She has been beaten by her ‘man’ who kicks in doors and goes to jail for 1 or 2 days. . . . We suggested she obtain a gun and kill him in self-defense, but evidently she hasn’t. Therefore, we are evicting her.”

Landlords see claims of intimate partner violence as unimportant and petty. As one landlord explained, “Like I tell my tenants: You can’t be calling the police because your boyfriend hit you again. They’re not your big babysitter.” Landlords hold abused tenants responsible not just for controlling their partners, but for doing so without involving the police. Landlords discouraged tenants from calling 911 and threatened tenants that calling 911 could result in eviction. For example, a landlord wrote a tenant, “[P]olice are not to be used to solve disputes and family problems. . . . The police are to notify me immediately if 911 is called [again]. . . . If the situation they are called for is deemed to be non-life threatening, I will immediately start the eviction process for the tenant or tenants where the problem originates from.”⁴⁵

Nuisance laws create what women’s and gender studies professor Gretchen Arnold has called a double bind for tenants: “[I]f their abusers showed up at their apartments again, they would be evicted, but the women had no way to keep their abusers away without calling 911, which would itself trigger eviction under the nuisance ordinance.” One woman explained, “Well, it seem like with the nuisance thing, you have to deal with, you know, the situation like my ex-boyfriend, or whatever. [The landlord] come over and tell me I have to deal with that. Or just pray he don’t kill me or anything because if I call the police, they’re going to contact my landlord and then I’ll probably be homeless.”⁴⁶ Notably, the vast majority of the tenants evicted for intimate partner violence in Milwaukee were not living with the partners who abused them. Only nine of the seventy-one cases in which landlords threatened or carried out evictions involved cohabiting couples.⁴⁷

Sociologists Matthew Desmond and Nicol Valdez conclude, “The nuisance property ordinance has the effect of forcing abused women to choose between calling the police on their abusers (only to risk eviction) or staying in their apartments (only to risk more abuse). Women from black neighborhoods disproportionately face this devil’s bargain.”⁴⁸ About half of the women in Arnold’s Saint Louis study were forced to move as a result of the laws—either because they had already been evicted or in order to avoid eviction.⁴⁹

Eviction brings with it a host of other problems. Eviction is correlated with homelessness, material hardship, residential instability, job loss, depression, and suicide. Eviction keeps tenants from qualifying for public housing and from finding affordable housing in desirable neighborhoods. As one woman told Arnold, “[A] couple of people, when I tried to get an apartment, told me, ‘We see that there are some things in here about you calling the police.’ And they didn’t want to rent to me.”⁵⁰ Women reported to Arnold that they had lost all of their personal possessions as a result of eviction and that eviction exacerbated preexisting physical and mental illnesses. The consequences of eviction can be so dire that Desmond and Valdez question whether reported declines in intimate partner violence owe more to the effectiveness of increased enforcement of the criminal law or to the unwillingness of people to report lest they lose their housing.

Protecting people subjected to abuse from housing instability using the law has had mixed results. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued a number of jurisdictions for misuse of their nuisance property laws in cases involving intimate partner violence, but those ordinances persist in many places. Lawyers have also argued that targeting women subjected to abuse violates the gender discrimination provisions of the Fair Housing Act. VAWA prohibits housing authorities, landlords, and owners of federally subsidized housing from using intimate partner violence as a justification for denial of housing, termination from a federally subsidized housing program, or eviction. There are few reported cases brought under VAWA, although one federal judge found that a woman could bring a claim based on VAWA’s housing provisions where the Zanesville Metropolitan Housing Authority allegedly failed to appreciate that the damage done to her housing unit was a result of intimate partner violence, made unfounded accusations that the woman herself caused the damage, attempted to evict her and her children, and provided inaccurate information about her to other potential landlords.⁵¹ A number of states have passed laws preventing private landlords from discriminating on the basis of intimate partner violence. But it is likely that people subjected to abuse continue to face adverse housing actions as a result of intimate partner violence, and it is impossible to know how often such actions occur. Moreover, such protections do not prevent landlords from using other justifications for barring residents from housing, even when those conditions (past history of eviction, poor credit history, criminal record) stem from intimate partner violence.⁵² People subjected to abuse could easily become “unhouseable” as a result.⁵³

ECONOMIC POWER FOR PEOPLE SUBJECTED TO ABUSE

Women subjected to abuse want economic security: the ability to pay their monthly bills, meet their basic needs, and have money left over for entertainment or savings. As one woman explained, “I just want to be able to breathe.”⁵⁴ Recognizing this desire for economic empowerment, antiviolence advocates have developed programs designed to improve women’s financial literacy, self-efficacy (the belief that a woman can be economically stable), and self-sufficiency. Most programs focus on teaching women basic financial skills, including goal setting and financial planning, managing cash flow, banking, and credit, and investing, as well as confronting the complex financial problems that come with intimate partner violence, including repairing damage to credit done by a partner. These programs are generally successful in improving women’s basic financial literacy and sense of economic self-efficacy and self-sufficiency. Most of the women participating in the Allstate Foundation’s Moving Ahead Through Financial Management program, for example, set financial goals, created a budget, and paid off debt; around a quarter of them started a retirement account.⁵⁵ A similar financial literacy program, Redevelopment Opportunities for Women’s Economic Action Program (REAP), improved women’s confidence in handling financial issues, but their financial knowledge did not significantly increase. After completing REAP, women reported that they used their money differently, kept to a budget, tracked their spending, sought to repair their credit, attempted to reduce their debt, and saved more.

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) were an essential component of REAP. Low-income families often lack access to employer-sponsored retirement plans or 401(k) plans; IDAs match the money that low-income families are able to save, enabling them to purchase a home, start a business, or finance a family member’s education. Matching funds for REAP IDAs came from a combination of government and private sector sources, and match incentives ranged from one dollar to two dollars for each one dollar saved, depending upon a woman’s household income. REAP IDA funds could be used to buy or repair a home, pay for education, start or support a small business, save for retirement, or purchase a car (something that most IDAs do not permit but that is essential for women attempting to leave violent relationships and establish economic independence). Participants were also permitted to access their own (but not matching) funds in case of emergencies. Monthly deposits of as little as $10 were required to participate in the program, and women could accumulate as much as $2,000 in savings and $4,000 in matching funds. Women involved in REAP saved an average of $87 per month, accruing an average total savings of $1,310. African American women, who started the program with much lower incomes than other participants, saved significantly less than other women enrolled in the program. The average woman reached her savings goal in nineteen months. Most participants used their accounts to purchase a car or pay for education. Participants in the IDA program reported improved financial management and restraint, which included making and following a budget, consistently saving money, and changing their spending behavior. Saving increased participants’ self-confidence and gave them greater hope for the future; participants believed that saving might even prevent future violence. Knowing that their partners would not be able to withdraw money from their IDAs made women feel that they had options if their relationships turned violent. As Ella explained, “It makes me feel strong enough to have something that somebody cannot take away from me . . . where I can stand up and walk away.”⁵⁶ Moreover, having savings made women feel more stable because they would not need to rely on their partners economically and would be able to secure housing and other necessities.

At least one financial literacy program puts resources directly into the hands of women subjected to abuse. The Kentucky Coalition against Domestic Violence’s Economic Empowerment program coupled financial education and IDAs with credit counseling and microloans. Upon completion of the program, participants were more likely to use a budget, check their credit score, save money, and decrease household debts. Homelessness declined significantly among participants in the program, and women reported being better able to meet their basic living and health-care needs. Average monthly income and savings also increased among participants.⁵⁷