Understanding and Preventing Gender-Based Violence in Sweden

Using administrative data from Sweden and the United States, this grant from Sweden’s Riksbank provides the first large-scale estimates on both the intergenerational transmission of gender-based violence and evidence on how this cycle can be broken. Working with colleagues at Stockholm University, Northeastern researchers showed that sons of fathers suspected of gender-based violence are more than twice as likely to become suspected perpetrators, and daughters exposed to violent fathers are almost twice as likely to partner with violent men. These patterns persist after controlling for demographics including socioeconomic status and neighborhood characteristics. The team then examined whether removing abusive fathers from the household disrupts this transmission. Although separations generate sizable and persistent income losses, when comapred to non-violent households father removal significantly reduces both sons’ perpetration and daughters’ victimization risks in adulthood. Family fixed-effects estimates further show that removal of a violent father before age 11 yields larger protective effects, particularly for sons. Finally, using a judge-IV design, researchers found that quasi-random removal of abusive fathers reduces the intergenerational cycle of violence by reducing the perpetration risk among sons separated from abusive fathers in their formative ages. Together, these results indicate that gender-based violence is a learned behavior developed over childhood and that reducing exposure to abusive fathers can meaningfully weaken its intergenerational persistence.

Project Team:

• Bilge Erten, Associate Professor of Economics and International Affairs

Project Sponsor:

• Riksbanken