Welfare Reform, Domestic Violence, and Employment

Welfare reforms enacted in 1996 require that recipients work to receive benefits. Advocates for battered women feared that abusive men would escalate violence in response to independence brought to women by employment. Yet research on employment, domestic violence, and welfare reform has yielded mixed findings. The authors review those findings and propose that a context-sensitive social-psychological perspective identifying relevant dimensions of culture and measuring partner’s employment may be more useful than a focus only on characteristics of women. Findings suggest that inclusion of generous work supportsin welfare legislation may help reducepoverty and domestic violence.