Citation

Santaularia NJ, Osypuk TL, Ramirez MR, Mason SM. Am. J. Epidemiol. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/aje/kwac114

PMID

35767881

Abstract

Substantial evidence suggests that economic hardship causes violence. However, a large majority of this research relies on observational studies that use traditional violence surveillance systems that suffer from selection bias and over-represent vulnerable populations, such as people of color. To overcome limitations of prior work, we employed a quasi-experimental design to assess the impact of the Great Recession on explicit violence diagnoses (injuries identified to be caused by a violent event) and proxy violence diagnoses (injuries highly correlated with violence) for child maltreatment, intimate partner violence (IPV), elder abuse, and their combination. We used Minnesota hospital data from 2004 to 2014, conducting a difference-in-differences analysis at the county level (N=86) using linear regression to compare changes in violence rates from pre-recession (2004-2007) to post-recession (2008-2014) in counties most affected by the recession, versus changes over the same time period in counties less affected by the recession. The findings suggested that the Great Recession had little or no impact on explicit-identified violence, however it affected proxy-identified violence. Counties that were more highly affected by the Great Recession saw a greater increase in the average rate of proxy-identified child abuse, elder abuse, IPV, and combined violence when compared to less affected counties.

Language: en

Keywords

child abuse; violence; intimate partner violence; Difference-in-differences; elder abuse; Great Recession; hospital data