Intimate Partner Violence and Children's Human Capital: The Development of Socio-Emotional and Cognitive Skills in Early Years

欧盟基本权利机构最近在欧盟范围内发布的一份报告发现，22%的女性在有生之年经历过亲密伴侣暴力(IPV)，世界卫生组织广泛引用的估计表明，全球的发病率要高得多。IPV的规模和影响吸引了多个学科的关注，这些学科正试图从不同的角度为这一重要和毁灭性的现象提供准确的证据。除了IPV对妇女身心健康的不容置疑和广泛记录的不利影响外，接触IPV的儿童本身也越来越多地被认为是受害者。接触IPV对儿童的伤害可能是通过目睹虐待行为直接造成的，也可能是通过影响母子互动而间接造成的。在母亲被伴侣虐待的家庭中长大，可能会对孩子造成严重的冲击，潜在地阻碍他们人力资本的发展。该项目将提供证据，说明儿童接触IPV对他们出生至7岁期间认知和社会情感发展的影响，以及母亲对虐待的反应所起的作用。为此，该项目将实施并进一步发展最近在经济学中引入的研究人力资本形成技术的方法。重点将放在技能积累的动态上，研究技能如何共同进化，以及母子互动在这一过程中的作用。最重要的是，对于这一非常成功的近期文献，我们将第一次将IPV作为负面投入纳入其中。这一方法的优势将通过使用特别丰富的数据来源得到充分利用--这种数据来源在国际上是独一无二的，因为它包含了对大量有代表性的人口进行分析所需的所有必要信息。雅芳父母和儿童纵向研究(ALSPAC)是一项英国队列研究，包括(I)IPV发病率的年度指标；(Ii)儿童认知和社会情感技能的高频和可靠测量；(Iii)关于母子互动和母亲心理健康的极其详细的一套信息。具体地说，该项目将解决三个研究问题，这些问题将进一步理解暴露在IPV中如何阻碍儿童的发展。首先，儿童接触IPV对他们的认知和社会情感技能发展的直接影响有多大？这实际上将暴露在IPV中作为一种有害的虐待形式。第二，作为对IPV的回应，母子互动的变化产生了哪些间接影响？这种相互作用可能会放大或补偿IPV对目睹IPV的儿童的负面影响。第三，是什么技能之间的互动，以及技能和母子互动之间的互动，塑造了IPV对儿童早期社会情感和认知技能发展的动态影响？这类互动对于建议政策干预的最佳性质和时机至关重要。因此，目前的项目将有助于编写一本极具影响力和迅速增长的经济文献，研究幼儿条件对发展的重要性，并将使人们能够通过充分利用现有独特数据资源的丰富程度获得新的重要见解。在开发这一分析时，我们的项目将借鉴并促进一项跨越多个学科的研究，包括社会学、心理学、儿科学和犯罪学。该项目的调查结果是对彻底记录和进一步研究家庭内IPV的破坏性影响的需要作出的回应，目的是提出有效的政策建议以减轻其影响。

A recent EU-wide report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that 22 percent of women had experienced Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in their lifetime, and wide-cited estimates by the WHO suggest that the global incidence is significantly higher. The scale and impact of IPV, have attracted the attention from multiple academic disciplines that -- from different angles -- are trying to provide accurate evidence on this important and devastating phenomenon. Besides the indubitable and widely documented adverse impact of IPV on women's physical and mental health, children exposed to IPV are also increasingly recognized as victims in their own right. The harm to children exposed to IPV may be both direct through the witnessing of abuse, or indirect by affecting the mother-child interactions. Growing up in a family where the mother is abused by her partner might represent a grave shock for the child, potentially hindering the development of their human capital.This project will provide evidence on the impact of children's exposure to IPV on their cognitive and socio-emotional development between birth and age seven, and on the role of mother's responses to abuse. To this purpose, this project will implement and further develop a methodology recently introduced in economics to study the technology of human capital formation. The focus will be on the dynamics of the accumulation of skills, studying how skills co-evolve, and the role of mother-child interactions in this process. Most importantly, in relation to this highly successful recent literature, we will incorporate, for the first, time IPV as a negative input. The strength of this method will be fully exploited by using an exceptionally rich source of data -internationally unique in containing all the necessary information for this analysis of a large representative population. The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a UK cohort study that includes (i) annual indicators of the incidence of IPV; (ii) high-frequency and reliable measures of children's cognitive and socio-emotional skills; (iii) extremely detailed set of information on mother-child interactions as well as mother's mental health. Specifically, the project will address three research questions that will further the understanding of how children's development is hampered by exposure to IPV. First, how large are the direct effects of children's exposure to IPV on their development of cognitive and socio-emotional skills? This in effects casts exposure to IPV as a form of harmful maltreatment. Second, what are the indirect effects generated by change in mother-child interactions as a response to IPV? Such interactions can potentially amplify or compensate for the negative impact of IPV on children witnessing IPV. Third, what interactions between skills, and between skills and mother-child interactions, shape the dynamic effects of IPV on children's development of socioemotional and cognitive skills over their early life years? Such interactions are crucial for suggesting the optimal nature and timing of policy interventions.The current project will hence contribute to a highly influential and rapidly growing economic literature studying the importance of early childhood conditions for development and will allow new important insights to be gained by fully exploiting the richness of an existing unique data resource. In developing this analysis, our project will draw on, and contribute, to a research that spans multiple disciplines including sociology, psychology, pediatrics and criminology. The findings of this project respond to the need of thoroughly documenting and further studying the damaging effect of IPV within the family with the purpose of suggesting effective policy recommendations to alleviate its effect.