Page 169 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 1

IPS129 Rivera-Galicia, L.F. et al.
victims who experience suffering and pain. Moreover, it has also significant
economic costs in terms of expenditures on service provision and healthcare,
lost income for women and their families, work absenteeism of victims and
aggressors, police and legal costs, etc.
Calculating the cost of gender violence helps to know the economic
resources lost by the agents affected by the violence: not only the victims, the
people close to them and the aggressors, but also the companies of the
private sector, the public administration, civil society, and future generations.
This type of studies has a double goal: to foresee the economic costs that
represent not to reduce gender violence; and estimate the potential gains that
would result from a significant reduction in the levels of gender violence. In
addition, knowing the economic cost of gender violence helps to reduce the
existing social acceptance of this problem and to improve the design of public
policies to get rid of it.
In this paper, we estimate the total tangible costs of Intimate Partner
Violence (IPV) against women in 2016 in Spain. In section 2, we present the
methodology. In sections 3 to 5 we explain the estimates made in the
following categories: employment, health and justice. Section 6 refers to other
costs not included in the previous categories. Finally, section 7 shows the
aggregate costs.

2. Methodology
The concept of gender-based violence in Spain is defined in the Integrated
Law against Gender Violence (GREVIO, 2019, pp. 5-89). It refers to violence
against women committed by men who are their partners or who have been
a former partner. The reference year for the estimated costs is 2016.
We have used several data sources to estimate the prevalence and type of
violence suffered by women. The Spanish Survey on Violence against Women
2015 has been very useful in determining the prevalence and types of violence,
but we have also used administrative records for health and legal aspects.
We have estimated the tangible direct costs, referred to the monetary
value of the goods and services consumed in the prevention and treatment of
gender violence; and the tangible indirect costs, referred to the resources that
are lost because of the reduction of the productive activity or the loss of
income due to greater female inactivity or unemployment caused by gender
violence.
The general methodology we have used is the Accounting Model, since it
is one of the most common methodological options (Day, McKenna and
Bowlus, 2005). It is well adapted to making estimates referred to a wide range
of costs and affected agents, which are then added to provide the total cost.
Component items can be costed using a ‘bottom-up’ or a ‘to-down’ approach
(Chan and Cho, 2010). The analysis has been divided into categories and in

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