Assessing the impact of commuting on family violence

Abstract

I study the impact of commuting time on family violence. To avoid potential endogeneity concerns, I exploit the exogenous variation in the commuting time provided by car accidents. Using US county-level data, I find that when a car accident that increases commuting time occurs, the number of family violence reported cases during the following hours decreases. I argue that the underlying mechanisms that may explain this relationship are physical tiredness and time allocation.

Keywords: family violence, commuting, car accidents, physical tiredness, time allocation.