Browsing by Subject "Domestic violence"

This dissertation studies three questions in labor economics centering around immigration policy and its effects on vulnerable populations. I use administrative data from the United States (U.S.) and Germany to address these questions empirically.

In the first chapter, I investigate the effects of an increase in immigration enforcement through local police force on domestic violence victims’ help-seeking behavior. I use a fixed effects model, a generalized synthetic control method and novel administrative data on the use of services for domestic violence victims in North Carolina. In North Carolina, a large fraction of individuals of Hispanic origin are undocumented immigrants or connected to undocumented immigrants. I find that local immigration enforcement significantly reduces Hispanics’ use of domestic violence services. It does not affect service use by African Americans who are predominantly U.S.-born citizens. This suggests that the decrease in Hispanics' service use is directly related to their immigration status and not driven by a general effect on minorities. I do not find any robust evidence that local immigration enforcement affects intimate partner homicides of Hispanic women.

The second chapter studies the relationship between workforce demographics, workplace hazard, and worker complaints about hazardous or illegal working conditions. In joint work with Matthew Johnson, I examine if worker complaints are effective in directing inspections by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to the most hazardous workplaces. We measure worker complaints and workplace injuries by inspections triggered by a worker complaint and a serious workplace injury, respectively. We find that the complaint rate in a county and industry is positively associated with its recent injury rate. This relationship changes for workplaces with a high share of Hispanic workers. Workplaces that employ larger shares of Hispanic workers have lower complaint rates, but higher injury rates. We use fixed effects regressions to estimate the effect of local immigration enforcement on Hispanic workers' willingness to complain about hazardous conditions. We find that stronger enforcement significantly reduces worker complaints, but not workplace injuries in workplaces with a high share of Hispanic workers. This provides evidence that stronger local immigration enforcement reduces Hispanic workers' willingness to complain about unsafe working conditions irrespective of the true workplace hazard.

In the third chapter, I investigate the effect of integrating refugee students in elementary schools on the academic performance of native students. Using administrative data from Germany, I exploit the variation in the percentage of refugee students within schools to account for endogenous sorting of refugees into schools. I do not find any evidence for negative effects of refugee students' integration on the academic performance of native elementary students. In contrast, exposure to refugee students reduces mandatory grade retention rates of German fourth graders. Effects on the percentage of students who receive a recommendation for the higher secondary track are very small and statistically insignificant. I also show that refugee students attend schools where German students' performance is lower.

Background: Violence exposure in children can lead to psychological problems and poor health outcomes that can be associated with post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD). This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of full or partial PTSD associated with exposure to community and domestic violence in school-aged children in Sri Lanka. The study aimed to (1a) estimate the prevalence of community violence and domestic violence among school-aged adolescents in Sri Lanka, (1b) estimate the prevalence of community violence and domestic violence overall and by sex among school-aged adolescents in Udugama, Sri Lanka, (2) estimate the prevalence of partial PTSD and full PTSD among those who experience community and/or domestic violence, (3) and does it vary by age, sex, socioeconomic status, and length of exposure to do violence with exposure to domestic and community violence.Methods: This study was a secondary data analysis that utilized a cross-sectional design, using two questionnaires: (1) Child Exposure to Domestic Violence (CEDV) Scale to measure violence exposure, and (2) The UCLA PTSD Reaction Index for DSM IV, a self-report questionnaire to screen for exposure to traumatic events and assess PTSD symptoms in school-age children and adolescents. 346 school children were selected for the study. Children in grades 10 and 11 were selected with a mean age of 14.9 years (SD = 0.02), with a range of 14 to 16 years old were randomly selected from two secondary schools in Udugama MOH area. The two largest schools were non-randomly selected. Within the two schools, four classes were selected randomly. All children present on the day of data collection were selected for the study. As more than 90% of the children are schooling in Sri Lanka, we believe a school-based screening will obtain a representative sample of adolescents in the community. Logistic regression models were used to explore the relationship between sex, age, socioeconomic status, and length of exposure with domestic and community violence. Log-risk regression models were used to explore the prevalence of community and domestic violence and the relationship between violence exposure and full or partial PTSD symptoms. Univariable logistic models were used to estimate associations between individual characteristics (such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, and length of exposure to violence) and partial or full PTSD. Results: Among the 346 participants, 304 (88%) adolescents reported experiencing some type of violence, whether it was community violence or domestic violence on the CEDV questionnaire. Only those who reported experiencing violence were then asked to take the UCLA PTSD Index. Of these, a total of 203 (68%) met criteria A on the UCLA PTSD index and therefore had experienced at least one traumatic event. Of these a total of 52(26%) did not have PTSD, 53 (26%) had partial PTSD, and 98 (48%) had full PTSD. The results showed that age and sex were not associated with PTSD severity. Sex was not associated with the outcome of partial PTSD (p > 0.682; CI: -0.136, 0.089) and full PTSD (p > 0.682; CI: -0.089, 0.136). Age was not statistically significantly associated with the outcome of partial PTSD (p > 0.924; CI: -0.147, 0.162) and full PTSD (p >0.924; CI: -0.162, 0.147). However, the age range was limited to 14 to 16 years, and further research needs to be done for more definitive conclusions. Duration of violence was the only individual characteristic that was statistically significant in the analysis for two responses 1) two to three years back (OR 5.07 (CI:1.11; 23.21) p = 0.037) and 2) as long as I can remember (OR 11.03 (CI: 1.22; 99.51) p = 0.032). Conclusions: The most significant finding of this study is that of those who experience domestic or community violence, 61.9% will develop PTSD. Additionally, domestic violence 189 (90.8%) was reported more often by adolescents than community violence 20 (9.57%). This study was limited due to the small study size and the narrow range of age, which limits its generalizability to the wider population of Sri Lanka or adolescents in general. Therefore, conclusions about the significance of individual characteristics such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, and duration of violence exposure resulting in partial or full PTSD could not be determined. More studies are necessary to test the hypothesis of whether individual characteristics of adolescents in Sri Lanka is associated with partial or full PTSD.

This thesis examines how domestic violence is talked about both in the Russian Federation after the fall of the Soviet Union and by the Westerners whom have offered their expertise on the matter. The first chapter shows how there is a divide between Russian journalists and Russian academic scholars in the way domestic violence is viewed and how they believe it can be resolved. Although they both share some consistent values, there is tension between whether a new enforced law can be preventive or if the need to prevention goes beyond the law. The second chapter discusses how Westerners from both the United States and the United Kingdom have used various methods of data collection to find out why the establishment of women's crisis centers have not been as stable and successful as they had hoped. It also explores how Western aid comes with specific standards and how the word `feminism' has become stigmatized in Russia. Both of these chapters use newspaper articles, journal articles, and interdisciplinary analyses of academic texts to show how domestic violence has become recognized as a major problem in Russia, and how both Russians and Westerners are searching for a solution to end the violence.

Conclusions show how there is still a need for dialogue between Russians who are trying to aid victims of domestic violence and Westerners who have been working in this field for many years. This thesis works as a meta-analysis to show the past and current dialogue happening between Russia and `Western' scholars.

Firearms regulation rarely passes in the United States due to the strength of the gun rights lobby. However, in the past several years, policymakers in traditionally pro-gun states have passed laws that restrict domestic abusers’ access to firearms. The success of these policies suggests that domestic violence and firearms regulations may represent a rare opportunity for bipartisan agreement in this contentious policy area. This dissertation examines domestic violence related firearms regulations from three angles. The first chapter presents a qualitative comparative case study analysis of domestic violence and firearms legislation to understand how these policies overcame robust barriers to passage. The results demonstrate that the prominence of domestic violence prevention advocates and “strategic absence” of larger gun control groups in the policy process increased the probability of the legislation’s passage. The second chapter leverages an original survey experiment involving 1,000 participants in the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) to test whether framing gun regulation as domestic violence prevention instead of gun control can increase support for the legislation. While I find that framing does not impact respondents’ support for a new law, women are more likely to support the policy than men. Importantly, this result remains significant after controlling for political party, suggesting that women’s collective action could bring about bipartisan cooperation on some gun regulations. The third and final chapter demonstrates the importance of preemptive gun regulations for reducing intimate partner homicide through an analysis of homicide data from the North Carolina Violent Death Reporting System. Together, this collection of studies sheds light on the politics and design of domestic violence and firearms regulation and creates a foundation for future research in this important policy area.