User:Rebekahfrese/Economic abuse

Job Related Impacts
There are several ways that abusers may impact a victim's economic resources. Conflicts between an abuser and victim can be: conflict about work, conflict that interferes with work, or conflict where an abuser follows his partner to work. As mentioned earlier, the abuser may prevent the victim from working or make it very difficult to maintain a job. They may likewise impede their ability to obtain an education. Frequent phone calls, surprise visits and other harassing activities interfere with the cohabitant's work performance. In case of a cohabitant being homosexual, bisexual, transgender, or questioning of their sexuality (LGBTQ), the abuser may threaten to "out them" with their employer.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence in the United States reports that:


 * 25–50% of victims of abuse from a partner have lost their job due to domestic violence.
 * 35–56% of victims of domestic violence are harassed at work by their partners.

When economic solvency is required for independence, but an abuser has impeded the victim's efforts to work, the victim may turn to social assistance programs, like welfare, in an effort to gain some financial independence. However, welfare policies that include Personal Responsibility clauses, which require an individual to gain and maintain employment in order to receive assistance, create another barrier to victims of economic abuse when their partners do not allow them to work and/or strictly control their movements or activities outside the home.

Specific work-related obstructions an abuser may employ to control, abuse, and sabotage an individual's career and/or educational aspirations include: immediate health and safety crises, sabotage of achievements and aspirations, and long-term debilitating injuries which can disrupt work/education or preclude further work/education.

Economic Abuse and Welfare Eligibility
Economic abuse is a form of domestic violence and is linked to social assistance programs through analysis of two phenomena: abuse in the lives of welfare recipients and welfare use by battered women. In order to leave an abusive partner through financial independence, waged work is presented as the solution to both poverty and battering. In this way, an individual can be trapped by an abusive partner (through coercive control) and their financial dependency on the abusive partner (because of lack of work/ineligibility for welfare benefits). Two models have been established as a way to address economic abuse: the exposure and the exchange models. The exposure model theorizes that employment will limit a woman's exposer to abuse (physical); the exchange model theorizes that employment will increase a woman's bargaining power (through income) within a relationship.

Public policies enacted to address both abuse and welfare eligibility issues include the Violence Against Women Act (1994), the Personal Responsibility Act (1996), and the Family Violence Option (1996).

Gender and Racial Disparities and Welfare Use and Eligibility
Populations with the highest rates of poverty (when compared to percentage of total population) include: AIAN, Black women, and Latinas; unmarried mothers; women aged 25-35 are 69% more likely to experience poverty than their male counterparts; people with disabilities; LGBTQ women. The gender and race poverty gaps exist because of the gender wage and wealth gaps. On average, women are paid less than their male counterparts, and among women, Black women earn, on average, $23.5k less than their white female counterparts (2018). The rates of incident and types of abuse are not drastically different among racial groups, however the resources available to victims do vary based on geographic and socio-economic class location.