Explaining the Decline in Intimate Partner Homicide

Abstract

This article explains the two-decades-long decline in the intimate partner homicide rate in the United States in terms of three factors that reduce exposure to violent relationships: shifts in marriage, divorce, and other factors associated with declining domesticity; the improved economic status of women; and increases in the availability of domestic violence services. The authors' explanation is based on a theory of exposure reduction that helps to account for the especially pronounced decline in the rate at which married women kill their husbands. The authors test the theory with data from a panel of 29 large U.S. cities for the years 1976 to 1992. The results of the analysis are generally supportive of our exposure-reduction theory. The authors consider the importance of the results for subsequent research on intimate partner homicide and call for further evaluation of the efficacy of legal responses to domestic violence.