IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ieb/wpaper/doc2024-06.html

Hit where it hurts: Healthcare access and intimate partner violence

Author

Listed:
  • Cristina Bellés-Obrero

    (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB)

  • Caoimhe T. Rice

    (University of York)

  • Judit Vall Castelló

    (Universitat de Barcelona & IEB)

Abstract

This paper investigates the causal link between healthcare access and intimate partner violence (IPV) victims’ help-seeking behavior. Access to healthcare serves as a critical avenue for screening or detecting IPV. Doctors are legally mandated to report suspected criminal injuries to the authorities and can guide victims towards IPV support services. We exploit the 2012 reform in Spain that removed access to the public healthcare system for undocumented immigrants. We use court reports and protection order requests from the Judicial Branch of the Spanish government to perform a difference-in-differences approach, comparing the helpseeking behavior of foreign and Spanish women before and after the reform. We find that restricting healthcare access led to an immediate 12% decrease in IPV reporting and protection order applications among foreign women, particularly in regions with strict enforcement. Importantly, we show suggestive evidence that the reform did not change the underlying incidence of IPV but the results are driven by a reduction in injury reports from medical centers. Our findings are important given the increase in migration flows globally as well as for corrent debates on granting/limiting access to healthcare for marginalized groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Cristina Bellés-Obrero & Caoimhe T. Rice & Judit Vall Castelló, 2024. "Hit where it hurts: Healthcare access and intimate partner violence," Working Papers 2024/06, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    • Handle: RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2024-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ieb.ub.edu/ca/publication/2024-06-it-where-it-hurts-healthcare-access-and-intimate-partner-violence/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Yuxi & Torbica, Aleksandra, 2024. "Investigating the relationship between health and gender equality: What role do maternal, reproductive, and sexual health services play?," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    2. César Alonso-Borrego & Raquel Carrasco, 2023. "Intimate partner violence and women’s health: the private and social burden," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(47), pages 5591-5611, October.
    3. Calabresi, Elisabetta & Rodríguez-Planas, Núria, 2025. "Female Empowerment and Intimate Partner Violence," IZA Discussion Papers 18207, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Elisabetta Calabresi & Núria Rodríguez-Planas, 2025. "Female empowerment and intimate partner violence," Working Papers 2025/14, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    5. Liu, Jiacheng & Wang, Yaojing & Yao, Yi, 2024. "Anticipated benefit termination and health care consumption responses: Evidence from a quasi-experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2024-06. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iebubes.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.