Collateral Effects of COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders on Violence Against Women in the United States, January 2019 to December 2020

Background: The necessary execution of non-pharmaceutical risk-mitigation (NPRM) strategies to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 has created an unprecedented natural experiment to ascertain whether pandemic-induced social-policy interventions may elevate collateral health risks. Here, we assess the efects on violence against women (VAW) of the duration of NPRM measures that were executed through jurisdictional-level orders in the United States. We expect that stay-at-home orders, by reducing mobility and disrupting non-coresident social ties, are associated with higher incident reporting of VAW. Methods: We used aggregate data from the Murder Accountability Project from January 2019 through December 2020, to estimate count models examining the efects of the duration of jurisdictional-level (N=51) stay-at-home orders on femicide. Additionally, we used data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System to estimate a series of count models that examined the efects of the duration of jurisdictional-level (N=26) stay-at-home orders on nonlethal violence against women, including fve separate measures of intimate partner violence (IPV) and a measure of non-partner sexual violence. Results: Results from the count models indicated that femicide was not associated with COVID-19 mitigation strategies when adjusted for seasonal effects. However, we found certain measures of non-lethal VAW to be signifcantly associated in adjusted models. Specifcally, reported physical and economic IPV were positively associated with stay-at-home orders while psychological IPV and non-partner sexual violence were negatively associated with stay-at-home orders. The combination measure of all forms of IPV was positively associated with the duration of stay-at-home orders, indicating a net increase in risk of IPV during lockdowns. Conclusions: The benefts of risk-mitigation strategies to reduce the health impacts directly associated with a pandemic should be weighed against their costs with respect to women’s heightened exposure to ...