The cost of domestic violence

The Herald reports:

Sir Owen Glenn’s family violence inquiry has stumbled again, producing a $7 billion estimated cost of family violence based on the mis-reading of a key research paper.

A report by economist Suzanne Snively and Wellington theatre student Sherilee Kahui, published by the inquiry yesterday, said family violence cost New Zealand between $4.1 billion and $7 billion a year – up from Ms Snively’s last estimate in 1994 of just $1 billion.

But the higher figure of $7 billion was based on a claim that 23.6 per cent of women born in Christchurch in 1977 suffered intimate partner violence in the year leading up to interviews when they were 25 in about 2002.

That figure in the original paper published in 2005 by the Christchurch Health and Development Study actually refers to the number of men as well as women who scored 3 or 4 points on a violence victimisation scale for intimate partner violence.

Two-thirds of people in the study scored below 3 points and 9.4 per cent scored above 4 points.

Those scoring 3 or 4 points were described in the original paper as “predominantly a group of individuals reporting frequent minor psychological aggression and occasionally severe psychological aggression”, but “none reported any of the signs of severe domestic violence [injury or fearfulness]”.

So that would mean the estimate is around three times as large as it should be.

NZ does have a woeful record with domestic violence. I have a particular loathing for it. But reports that use such inflated figures probably damage the cause they are trying to assist with.

Personally I’m not very interested in the economic cost of domestic violence. It is the personal cost to those involved which is terrible.