American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 36, Nos. 1/2, September 2005 ( C  2005) DOI: 10.1007/s10464-005-6239-0 Domestic Violence and Women’s Employment: Fixed Effects Models of Three Waves of Women’s Employment Study Data Richard M. Tolman 1,3 and Hui-Chen Wang 2 Domestic violence can interfere with women’s ability to work, and may result in loss of wel- fare benefits and poorer economic outcomes. Previous studies showing no effect of domestic violence on employment could be a result of the failure to control for some individual char- acteristics; therefore we use fixed-effects models with three waves of Women’s Employment Study (WES) data to control for unobservable time-invariant individual-specific characteris- tics. Included in our analyses were 598 women, from an urban county in Michigan who were on the welfare rolls in February of 1997, all of whom completed 3 waves of interviews. Our fixed effects regression results show that domestic violence significantly reduced the annual work hours of a respondent. Mental and physical health problems do not completely mediate this relationship. Our results support efforts to address domestic violence within the welfare system. KEY WORDS: domestic violence; employment; welfare; abuse. Domestic violence may impact many spheres of a woman’s life and examining whether an association exists between domestic violence and work outcomes is important for several reasons. First, rates of abuse are higher among women receiving welfare than among nonrecipients (Tolman & Raphael, 2000). Secondly, battered women may depend on the welfare system to provide economic support to leave an abusive partner. For example, Goodwin, Meisel, Chandler, Jordan, and Cushner (2000) reported that one fifth of women on welfare caseloads in four California counties had at one time used welfare to escape an abusive situation. Finally, because of changes in the welfare laws, subsequent to the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconcilation Act (PRWORA), women who fail to work or participate in mandatory 1 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. 2 University of Mississippi, University, Missouri. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at University of Michigan, School of Social Work, 1080 S. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1106; e-mail: rtolman@umich.edu. training programs are more likely to be sanctioned by loss of welfare benefits. PRWORA ended federal en- titlement to welfare benefits, set limits on the number of years women could receive welfare, and required rapid entry into the work force to maintain welfare benefits. Responding to the concern that women ex- periencing domestic violence will be unable to fulfill these work requirements, most states have adopted the Family Violence Option, which allows temporary exemptions or deferments to work requirements and makes provisions for services to aid recipients dealing with abuse (Raphael & Haennicke, 1999). One key rationale behind the policies provided by the Family Violence Option is that women’s intimate partners use coercion to sabotage partic- ipation in work or educational programs (Raphael & Haennicke, 1998). Abusive partners may block women’s attempts to go to work, in part, because economic self-sufficiency may challenge abusers’ control. Early studies, conducted by Raphael (1995, 1996) demonstrated that many women face abuse by their partners that interferes with their attempts to go to work or participate in training. 147 0091-0562/05/0900-0147/0 C  2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.