Costs of Intimate Partner Violence at the Household and Community Levels: An Operational Framework for Developing Countries

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank UNFPA for providing funding and critical support for this work. We also wish to also thank Ashilan Kes for her research support, especially in pulling together the matrix of methods. Both Maria Beatriz Orlando and Srinvasan Rghavendran gave us excellent feedback and suggestions on the costing framework. Margo Young and Sandra Bunch provided editorial support that went beyond the call of duty. We also thank Kathleen Barnett for her comments and guidance through this entire project. Violence in intimate relationships is the most common form of gender-based violence experienced by women across the globe. Nearly one of out of every three women has experienced physical, emotional, or sexual violence in an intimate relationship (Heise, Ellsberg, and Gottemeiler 2000). In 48 population-based surveys from around the world, between 10 percent and 69 percent of women reported being physically assaulted by an intimate male partner at some point in their lives (WHO 2002). This pervasive violence has significant economic, health, and social consequences. Economic consequences include the costs of providing health care and other services, increased absenteeism, decreased productivity, and lower earnings. Violence undermines women's health and well-being, directly and indirectly, causing chronic morbidity, increased depression, lower birth weight, and mortality. Among children, witnessing abuse leads to increased delinquency and gang violence. Overall, violence contributes to reduced quality of life of families and communities and decreased participation by women in democratic processes. Though domestic violence exacts an enormous toll on society, putting a dollar figure on the actual cost is difficult. Yet to strengthen political will, it is essential to address this issue, ensuring required resources for responses and scaling-up of ongoing efforts. In the last decade, there has been growing attention to this field of inquiry, as evidenced by an increasing body of literature on the subject. Nearly 30 studies have been conducted which estimate the costs of domestic violence, primarily in industrialized countries. These studies have ranged from estimating costs in a particular sector (business, criminal justice, health, social services) to those at a particular level of government (municipal, provincial, national) to the aggregation of costs for a nation. While the existing cost studies point to which costs can be estimated with what methods, few are directly applicable to most developing countries because of different social norms on the acceptability of violence, the lack of a policy framework and information systems, and differences …