A new study released by the Copenhagen Consensus Center found that domestic violence costs the global economy nearly $8 trillion a year. The study says this dollar amount dwarfs global costs from civil wars and other violence worldwide. Domestic violence also kills more people than armed conflicts. Authors Anke Hoeffler of Oxford University and James Fearon of Stanford University said in the report, “for every civil war battlefield death, roughly nine people…are killed in inter-personal disputes.”
The $8 trillion a year figure is striking when compared to the estimated costs of all worldwide violence ($9.5 trillion a year). The Copenhagen study is intended to assist the United Nations in developing targets for the 2030 anti-poverty Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs) and to support analysis of current MDGs post-2015. Economists not involved in the study said it was important to “highlight the huge number of deaths from domestic violence,” even if they considered the survey’s authors “ambitious” in estimating global costs given the gaps in available data.
Compiled from: Doyle, Alister, Violence At Home Costs $8 Trillion a year, Worse Than War – Study, Reuters (September 9, 2014).