Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence and Children Dynamic Skill Accumulation: Evidence from a UK Longitudinal Study

Children are increasingly recognized as secondary victims of intimate partner violence. This
paper uses a unique UK longitudinal child development survey to study the relationship
between verbal and physical abuse experienced by mothers and children’s development up to
the age of seven. Estimating production functions for cognitive, social, and socio-emotional
skills we find that exposure during pre-school years has a quantitatively important negative
effect on socio-emotional skills among toddlers and negatively affects cognitive and social
skills after age three. The estimated impact on cognitive development is consistent with
measures of cognitive skills based on school-based tests.