What Is Economic Abuse?

Economic abuse is a form of intimate partner violence in which one partner controls or undermines the other's access to financial resources — with the aim of limiting their independence and making it harder to leave. It's one of the most effective tools of coercive control, and one of the most under recognized.

According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), financial abuse is present in 99% of domestic violence cases. Financial instability is consistently cited as one of the primary reasons survivors remain in or return to abusive relationships.

What It Might Look Like

Employment sabotage

Preventing a partner from working — through refusing childcare, damaging their professional reputation, creating conflict before job interviews, hiding keys, or destroying work-related materials.

Financial control

Taking sole control of bank accounts, requiring the partner to ask permission before spending, providing an insufficient "allowance," or withholding access to cash entirely.

Debt and credit abuse

Opening credit accounts or taking loans in the partner's name without their knowledge. Ruining a partner's credit score, leaving them financially compromised if they do leave.

Document withholding

Hiding or destroying identity documents, immigration papers, social security cards, or birth certificates — making it nearly impossible for a survivor to access services, housing, or employment independently.

Housing control

Keeping a partner off a lease or deed, threatening eviction, or using housing insecurity as leverage. For survivors without independent housing, leaving becomes profoundly dangerous.

The Connection to Immigration Status

For South Asian women on spousal or dependent visas, economic abuse intersects directly with immigration vulnerability. A partner may hold a visa as leverage — controlling whether the survivor can remain in the country, and making access to work authorization, healthcare, or legal resources contingent on staying in the relationship.

Research on South Asian immigrant women experiencing IPV in the US identifies immigration-related threats as a distinct and significant form of economic and psychological control. Survivors may fear deportation, loss of custody of US-born children, or return to circumstances from which they originally emigrated — fears that are rational and that abusers actively exploit.

Economic Safety Planning

Advocates who work with survivors often include economic safety planning alongside physical safety planning: slowly building savings in a private account, making copies of important documents, understanding what joint assets exist, researching legal rights around marital property. These are not simple steps. They require access to information, time, and safety that many survivors do not have. Understanding this form of abuse means understanding that leaving is never just a decision — it is a logistics problem with very high stakes.

This post is part of the Shared Language Series — a set of definitions and frameworks that inform the research and artistic development behind It's Private.

References

National Network to End Domestic Violence. About financial abuse. https://nnedv.org/content/about-financial-abuse/

National Network to End Domestic Violence. Financial abuse fact sheet. (March 2025). https://nnedv.org/wp-content/documents/Financial-Abuse-Fact-Sheet-March-2025-EN.pdf

Adams, A.E., et al. (2008). Development of the Scale of Economic Abuse. Violence Against Women, 14(5), 563–588.

Mellar, B.M., et al. (2024). Economic abuse by an intimate partner and its associations with women's socioeconomic status and mental health. Violence Against Women. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08862605241235140

Raj, A., & Silverman, J. (2002). Immigrant South Asian women at greater risk for injury from intimate partner violence. American Journal of Public Health, 93(3), 435–437. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.93.3.435

Hurwitz, E.J.H., et al. (2006). Intimate partner violence associated with poor health outcomes in US South Asian women. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, 8(3), 251–261.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16791535/