The Impact of Recent Partner Violence on Poor Women's Capacity to Maintain Work

Recent changes in welfare policy that require women to work have been particularly controversial for survivors of partner violence. This article explores the relationship between partner violence and work through time in an ethnically diverse longitudinal sample of 285 extremely poor women. Controlling for a variety of factors, women who experienced physical aggression/violence by male partners during a 12-month period had only one third the odds of maintaining employment for at least 30 hours per week for 6 months or more during the subsequent year as did women without these experiences. The study has important implications for welfare-to-work programming and public policy.