Miller Amalia R, Segal Carmit, Spencer Melissa K
University of Virginia, NBER and IZA, P.O. Box 400182, Charlottesville, VA 22903-4182, United States.
University of Zurich, United States.
J Urban Econ. 2022 Sep;131:103476. doi: 10.1016/j.jue.2022.103476. Epub 2022 Aug 2.
We empirically investigate the impact of COVID-19 shutdowns on domestic violence using incident-level data on both domestic-related calls for service and crime reports of domestic violence assaults from the 18 major US police departments for which both types of records are available. Although we confirm prior reports of an increase in domestic calls for service at the start of the pandemic, we find that the increase preceded mandatory shutdowns, and there was an incremental decline following the government imposition of restrictions. We also find no evidence that domestic violence crimes increased. Rather, police reports of domestic violence assaults declined significantly during the initial shutdown period. There was no significant change in intimate partner homicides during shutdown months and victimization survey reports of intimate partner violence were lower. Our results fail to support claims that shutdowns increased domestic violence and suggest caution before drawing inference or basing policy solely on data from calls to police.
我们利用美国18个主要警察部门提供的与家庭相关的服务请求和家庭暴力袭击犯罪报告的事件级数据，实证研究了新冠疫情封锁措施对家庭暴力的影响。这18个警察部门都能提供这两类记录。尽管我们证实了先前有关疫情初期家庭服务请求增加的报告，但我们发现这种增加在强制封锁之前就已出现，并且在政府实施限制措施后出现了逐渐下降。我们还没有发现家庭暴力犯罪增加的证据。相反，在最初的封锁期间，警方报告的家庭暴力袭击事件显著减少。在封锁月份，亲密伴侣杀人案没有显著变化，亲密伴侣暴力受害情况调查报告的数量也较低。我们的研究结果不支持封锁措施增加了家庭暴力的说法，并建议在仅根据警方报警数据进行推断或制定政策时要谨慎。
