Economic Coercion and Partner Violence against Wives in Vietnam: A Unified Framework?

Kathleen H. Krause, Emory University

Economic coercion refers to behaviors that control an intimate partner’s ability to acquire, use, and maintain economic resources. Little is known about economic coercion in Vietnam. Using survey responses from 533 married women aged 18–50 years, we estimated multinomial logistic regression models to compare the determinants of exposure to economic coercion only, co-occurring economic coercion and any psychological, physical, or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV), and any IPV only, relative to no exposure. Women with more schooling had higher odds of exposure to economic coercion only (aOR = 1.17, 95% CI 1.03– 1.33) ) but not for other forms of violence. Overall, the estimates from the three models differed significantly. Thus, the determinants of economic coercion and common forms of IPV appear to differ. More research should focus on men’s perpetration of economic coercion.