Effect of Employment Protection on Domestic Violence

Technical Summary: Effect of Employment Protection on Domestic Violence

Problem Statement and Motivation
Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a pervasive public health issue in the United States, with significant economic consequences for victims, including job loss, earnings disruption, and reinforced financial dependence on abusers. Existing literature suggests that economic insecurity limits victims' "exit options," thereby perpetuating cycles of violence. While prior research has examined how labor market shocks and wage gaps influence domestic violence (e.g., Aizer, 2010; Anderberg et al., 2016), the specific impact of statutory employment protections designed to shield survivors from job retaliation remains underexplored.

This paper investigates the causal effect of California's Senate Bill 400 (SB-400), enacted in January 2014, on the reporting of intimate partner violence. SB-400 amended the California Labor Code to prohibit employers from discharging, demoting, or retaliating against employees who are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. It also mandated reasonable workplace accommodations for such employees. The central research question is whether strengthening job-retention rights lowers the economic costs of disclosure, thereby increasing the reporting of IPV, or if it reduces the actual incidence of violence by enhancing victims' bargaining power and financial independence.

Methodology
The study utilizes a quasi-experimental design leveraging the implementation of SB-400 as a natural experiment. The analysis focuses on Los Angeles, a region with historically high IPV incidence, using data from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Los Angeles Sheriff Department (LASD), and the California Department of Justice, aggregated at the census tract level from 2010 to 2018. Socioeconomic controls are drawn from the American Community Survey (ACS).

The empirical strategy employs three complementary approaches:

1. Interrupted Time Series (ITS): An analysis of monthly IPV rates from January 2011 to December 2016 to estimate immediate and long-term trend shifts following the law's enactment.
2. Event-Study Specification: A tract-month panel analysis (December 2012–January 2015) to test for parallel trends prior to treatment and visualize dynamic effects.
3. Difference-in-Differences (DiD): A weighted least squares (WLS) model comparing IPV rates in tracts before and after January 2014. The model includes tract, year, and month-of-year fixed effects, along with a vector of socioeconomic controls (income, poverty, unemployment, race/ethnicity composition, education, homeownership, etc.). Standard errors are clustered at the LAPD area level.

To ensure robustness and validity, the author conducts several falsification and placebo tests:

• Alternative Treatment Dates: Re-defining the treatment window to 3 and 9 months prior/post-enactment to verify timing specificity.
• Placebo Outcomes: Estimating the model on non-IPV crimes (burglary, grand theft auto, larceny, robbery, non-IPV assault) and severe crimes less likely to be underreported (homicide, kidnapping).
• Robustness Checks: Using alternative functional forms (log, inverse hyperbolic sine, Poisson), expanding the time frame (2011–2017), and applying the model to unincorporated Los Angeles County and statewide county-level data.
• Heterogeneity Analysis: Disaggregating results by victim race and by tract-level characteristics (unemployment, poverty, race, income, homeownership, education).

Key Results
The primary finding is a statistically significant 14% increase in the reporting of intimate partner violence following the enactment of SB-400. This increase is observed immediately upon implementation and persists in the post-trend analysis.

• Mechanism (Reporting vs. Incidence): The study provides evidence that this increase reflects a rise in reporting rather than an increase in actual violence. Rates of homicide and kidnapping (crimes with low underreporting) remained unchanged. Furthermore, while formal police reports and felony arrests for IPV increased, 911 calls for domestic abuse services did not change significantly. This suggests the law altered victims' willingness to engage with formal institutions and the justice system rather than immediate crisis behavior or the underlying frequency of abuse.
• Heterogeneity: The effects are not uniform. The increase in reporting is driven primarily by Black and Hispanic victims. Tract-level analysis reveals that the law had a stronger impact in communities with higher unemployment, higher poverty rates, larger non-White populations, lower median incomes, higher renter shares, and lower educational attainment.
• Arrests: There was a significant rise in IPV-related arrests, specifically concentrated in felony cases rather than misdemeanors, indicating that the law may have reduced barriers to reporting more severe incidents of violence.
• Placebo Tests: No significant effects were found for gender-neutral crimes (burglary, theft, robbery) or when alternative treatment dates were used, supporting the identification strategy.

Contributions and Significance
This paper contributes to three distinct strands of literature:

1. Economics of Crime and Household Behavior: It extends the literature on how economic incentives and outside options affect domestic violence by focusing on institutional design (statutory protections) rather than market outcomes. It provides evidence that labor regulations can alter household decision-making and engagement with formal institutions.
2. Labor Market Institutions: It builds on research regarding workplace regulations by examining a specific legal mandate protecting survivors of domestic violence, demonstrating how employment law can shape individual outcomes beyond wages and employment probabilities.
3. Inequality and Reporting Disparities: It documents how legal reforms can differentially affect marginalized groups. The findings suggest that employment protections relax binding constraints on disclosure for disadvantaged groups (Black and Hispanic survivors, those in high-poverty areas), thereby reducing disparities in reporting across communities.

Conclusion
The paper concludes that strengthening job-retention rights for victims of domestic violence lowers the economic costs of disclosure, leading to increased engagement with the justice system. While the study documents an increase in reported cases and felony arrests, it does not claim to have reduced the actual incidence of violence in the short term; rather, it highlights the law's role in making violence more visible to formal institutions. The findings underscore the potential of labor policy to serve as a preventive tool by reducing the economic risks associated with leaving or reporting abusive relationships, suggesting that employment protections are a critical component of a broader system of survivor support.