Cohabitation, marriage, and murder: Woman-killing by male romantic partners

Using a national-level US homicide database that includes more than 400,000 homicides committed from 1976-1994, I calculated rates of uxoricide (the murder of a woman by her romantic partner) by type of relationship (cohabiting or marital), ages of the partners, and age difference between partners. Women in cohabiting relationships are about nine times more likely to be killed by their partner than are women in marital relationships. Within marital relationships, the risk of uxoricide decreases with a woman's age. Within cohabiting relationships, in contrast, middle-aged women are at greatest risk of uxoricide. Paralleling the uxoricide victimization rates, uxoricide perpetration rates are highest for young married men and for middle-aged cohabiting men. Uxoricide risk generally increases with greater age difference between partners. These findings provide the first national-level replication of uxoricide risk patterns reported for a national-level Canadian sample. Discussion highlights future research directions, including identifying why women in cohabiting relationships incur greater risk of uxoricide than do women in marital relationships.