BEGINNING TO UNDERSTAND THE ECONOMIC COSTS OF CHILDREN’S EXPOSURE TO INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE

Abstract

Intimate partner violence comprises 37% of violent crime in Canada, imposing significant economic costs on society. Childhood exposure to intimate partner violence is a well-documented phenomenon, but the resulting costs are less understood. Some research has found that children exposed to intimate partner violence are at a greater risk of developing health and behavioural problems that potentially impact these children as well as society as a whole. However, there is no known estimate of the economic costs of this exposure to intimate partner violence. In this paper, we develop a simple model to estimate these costs. We estimate that each year there are approximately 125,000 new children exposed to intimate partner violence generating a yearly economic cost to society of $759 million for that one cohort of children in Canada. Over a period of 10 years, this one cohort would impose an economic cost of $7.0 billion, and this is substantially underestimated because it does not include the new sets of children exposed to intimate partner violence each year. As such, the potential for societal economic cost savings resulting from the prevention of intimate partner violence is significant.