Domestic violence, beyond its numerous social impacts, costs the state of California $73.7 billion in health care, lost productivity and income and criminal justice and response program spending, according to a UC San Diego study released Tuesday.
The study was undertaken by UCSD’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and Tulane University’s Newcomb Institute.
“Too often, states do not recognize the economic as well as social and health costs resulting from intimate partner violence for survivors, families of victims and the state as a whole,” said Anita Raj, executive director of Newcomb Institute, lead author of the report and former UCSD professor of medicine and education studies. “These costs show the economic case for increased investment in prevention programs and reforms to effectively respond to domestic violence.”
The report found the $73.7 billion cost by looking at 2022’s domestic violence numbers. That figure represents around 2% of the state’s gross domestic product.
Drawing on data from the 2023 California Violence Experiences Survey, the authors found the fiscal impact of intimate partner violence amounts to almost a quarter of the state’s annual budget.
According to the CalVEX survey released last fall, more than half of California women experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime. One in 30 women — more than 460,000 in California — experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a partner in just the past year and those reporting abuses in the past year faced greater health and social risks, the authors note.
“Women who experienced intimate partner violence in the past year are more likely to be contending with depression, anxiety, and suicidality, and they are also more likely to have faced recent eviction,” said Jakana Thomas, a professor of political science at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and co-author of the report. “Preventing this violence has to be prioritized if we are going to address the mental health and homelessness crises in this state.”
California is one of only two states to tally the economic toll of domestic violence. Newcomb Institute and the Brookings Institute released a report earlier this year which found that domestic violence cost Louisiana $10.1 billion in 2022 alone.
According to the findings, the monetary costs per survivor amounted to $105,602 annually, or 2.5 times more than the average wage earned by women in Louisiana.
“The new analysis for Louisiana and California draws attention to the underreporting of intimate partner violence to the authorities, which is a common challenge across the country and around the world that is often attributed to women’s fear of consequences from reporting and lack of trust in the criminal justice system,” the authors write.
The authors made several recommendations to help survivors and prevent future domestic violence incidents:
— Establish a consistent and sustainable funding stream on violence prevention and response in the state budget;
— Tighten compliance with existing firearm legislation, especially among perpetrators of domestic violence;
— Improve data, specifically on the consequences of intimate partner violence, to better understand the scope of the challenges and track changes over time; and
— Design intersectional policies and practices that attend to the ways gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status produce both crosscutting and cumulative disadvantages.
–City News Service
