Economic violence

Economic abuse of children may include, for example, a parent taking out loans in a child’s name or treating the children in the family unequally in financial matters. Economic abuse can also occur in peer relationships or be perpetrated by familiar adults—for instance through extorting money or pressuring a child to steal. Those at particularly high risk of economic abuse include people in vulnerable situations, such as victims of human trafficking or young people who have absconded from a child welfare unit.

International studies show that financial abuse is a common form of intimate partner violence. According to a Europe-wide survey, about 14% of Finnish women have experienced financial abuse in an intimate relationship during their lifetime. In a relationship, financial abuse may take the form of complete control over household finances, whereby one partner controls all shared and personal funds and denies the other partner decision-making power in financial matters. Typical forms also include restricting a partner’s spending by denying them access to their own or shared funds or giving them only a tightly regulated amount of money. Preventing a partner from working and deliberately causing them to incur debt are also forms of financial abuse in intimate relationships (Adams et al. 2008). Financial abuse may continue after separation, as the victim has often lost assets and become indebted as a result of the abuse. The accumulation of problems is further exacerbated by the mental health and work ability impacts of violence experiences, which weaken the person’s ability to recover their financial situation after separation.

Older people are particularly vulnerable to financial abuse, and it is among the most common forms of violence they experience. Advanced age, dementia, reduced cognitive abilities, declining health, need for assistance in daily activities, and dependence on the perpetrator all increase the risk of experiencing financial abuse. Most often, the perpetrator is a family member of the older person, such as their own child. The perpetrator may, for example, use the older person’s resources for their own benefit, take control of their property, force them to sign financial documents, or blackmail them. Older people are also targeted by so-called romance, email, and identity scams aimed at appropriating the victim’s assets. Many older people do not seek help for the financial abuse they have experienced.

 

References

Acierno, R., Steedley, M., Hernandez-Tejada, M. A., Frook, G., Watkins, J. & Muzzy, W. (2020). Relevance of perpetrator identity to reporting elder financial and emotional mistreatment. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 39(2), 221–22

Adams, A. E., Sullivan, C. M., Bybee, D., & Greeson, M. R. (2008). Development of The Scale of Economic Abuse.
Violence Against Women, 14(5), 563–588.

Burnes, D., Henderson, C. R., Jr, Sheppard, C., Zhao, R., Pillemer, K., & Lachs, M. S. (2017). Prevalence of financial fraud and scams among older adults in the United States: A systematic review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 107(8), e13–e2

Christy, K., Welter, T., Dundon, K., & Bruce, A. (2022). Economic Abuse: A Subtle but Common Form of Power and
Control. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(1–2), 473–499. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520916264

Davidson, S., Rossall, P. & Hart, S. (2015). Financial Abuse Evidence Review. Age UK

European Union Agency For Fundamental Rights. (2014). Violence against women: an EU-wide survey. Main results.
https://doi.org/10.2811/62230

Kassem, R. & Carter, E. (2024). Mapping romance fraud research – a systematic review. Journal of Financial Crime,
31(4), 974–992.

Phelan, A. McCarthy, S. & McKee, J. (2018). Safeguarding staff’s experience of cases of financial abuse. The British Journal of Social Work, 48(4), 924–94