Structural Conditions and Pathways to Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence from a Longitudinal Analysis

Background and Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is widely understood as driven by an interplay of individual experiences and broader social conditions, including exposure to early adversity and systems of oppression. Grounded in an anti-oppressive and intersectional framework, this study conceptualizes IPV risk as socially produced over time through inequitable distributions of power, resources, and exposure to violence. However, most empirical studies examine predictors at a single level, limiting understanding of how these conditions become embodied in individual risk. Drawing on life course and structural violence frameworks, we examine whether early-life exposures, specifically childhood abuse and community violence, mediate the relationship between structural conditions (e.g., neighborhood disadvantage, school concentrated disadvantage, levels of adolescent rights, and crime rates) experienced in adolescence and IPV in early adulthood. This study explicitly names how upstream inequities shape downstream IPV risk through cumulative exposure to violence.

Methods: This study used restricted data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, including in-home, in-school, and contextual data from Waves I and V. Our analytic sample was contained to respondents who reported a romantic relationship at Wave V (N = 6,550). Generalized structural equation models (GSEM) with a logit link were used to examine pathways from structural and contextual factors (e.g., neighborhood disadvantage, adolescence rights index, contextual disadvantage index, crime rates) to IPV victimization and perpetration, respectively mediated by childhood abuse and adolescent community violence exposure. This study’s anti-oppressive orientation informed both the selection of structural variables and the focus on pathways through which these conditions become embodied.

Results: Results from the GSEM models with average marginal effects indicated that exposure to community violence (AME = 0.01, p = 0.02) and child abuse (AME = 0.03, p <0.001) were significantly associated with increased probability of victimization. Child abuse demonstrated the strongest association, corresponding to a 3.20% and 2.67% point increase in the probability of victimization and perpetration. While structural and contextual factors were not directly associated with victimization and perpetration, these factors were significantly associated with intermediate exposures; Neighborhood disadvantage, school concentrated disadvantage, adolescent rights index, and crime rates were positively associated with community violence exposure, whereas neighborhood disadvantage was associated with child abuse exposure for both perpetration and victimization (p <0.10).

Conclusions and Implications: These findings suggest that structural factors may influence IPV victimization and perpetuation primarily through indirect pathways, through early-life adversity and community-level violence exposure. Consistent with an anti-oppressive framework, results indicate that IPV risk is not simply the result of individual behavior but is socially produced over time through unequal exposure to harmful environments and constrained access to resources and supports. This shifts the focus away from individual-level risk to the social production of vulnerability, offering a counter to frameworks that pathologize individuals or traits. Implications include IPV prevention strategies that address concentrated disadvantage, community violence, and limited rights contexts, rather than relying solely on individual-level interventions. Together, this study underscores the importance of structurally informed, anti-oppressive approaches within social work research and practice.