Female and Male Medical Students’ Exposure to Violence: Impact on Well Being and Perceived Capacity to Help Battered Women

This paper contributes to the literature on domestic violence in several ways. First, the analysis explicitly models the endogeneity of the decision to leave. Second, the sample of abuse victims is nationally representative and includes both women who temporarily leave and women who never leave their abusers. Finally, the analyses test the prediction that the mere presence of shelters will decrease violence within intact relationships. While the results do not support this hypothesis, this may be due to the imperfect (state-level) measure of support services used.