Survivors of domestic and family violence—the majority of whom are women—experience a range of negative economic outcomes as a consequence of the violence they have survived. This is particularly prevalent for women where economic abuse was also part of the pattern of violence. Lack of financial resources makes leaving a violent relationship challenging for survivors and financial security is a reason some women return to violent relationships.

While domestic and family violence affects women from many different socio-economic and cultural background, there are groups of women who are at a higher risk—this includes Indigenous women, women with disabilities and culturally diverse women.

Broad economic analysis demonstrates the costs of domestic and family violence to the economy are great and that survivors bear proportionally more of these costs. However, there is no consistent index with which to measure the economic security for survivors of domestic and family violence. In the absence of this understanding it is difficult to gauge the extent of the problem and to measure whether service and policy responses are dealing with the issue.

To this end the researcher reviewed the literature about economic security and domestic and family violence. The review was conducted in order to develop a definition of economic security that reflected its individual and structural elements. From there, a range of potential indicators with which to measure the economic security for survivors were scoped. A measurement tool was also piloted with the support of the Australia Institute.

It is hoped that a larger scale, national study will be conducted to build on this research and measure the full extent of this problem, and that the creation of an ‘Economic Security for Survivors Index’ will be developed on the basis of the proposed indicators in this report.

The research makes a series of recommendations for policy and practice to better respond to the economic insecurity of survivors. There are also a series of recommendations for furthering data collection and the creation of the index.