Abstract for:Economic Consequences of Relationship and Sexual Violence on College Campuses

The economic consequences of relationship and sexual violence (RSV) in university communities remains a largely neglected area of research. Current prevention and response efforts tend to focus mainly on either the risks and prevalence or the legal aspects of addressing gender discrimination in education. While earlier research sought to capture the economic effects of relationship and sexual violence victimization across the lifespan (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). These focused primarily on tangible costs such as medical costs and lost days due to disability, and mainly on attributing the economic costs to victimization of the individual. However, it is largely unknown what the aggregate economic consequences of RSV are when one factors in the larger societal impact (e.g., the cost associates with vicarious trauma and support networks), costs of general social exclusion that can be tied to the fear of relationship and sexual violence, and the costs associated with interactions between a single incident of RSV and a more pervasive pattern of microaggressions along one or more other dimensions of social identity. This study draws on existing data sets and a prior individual feedback model to generate a student population model that is used to estimate the economic costs of RSV.