How Does Sexual Assault Affect Women's Employment, Earnings, and Mental Health?
Adams et al. (2026) examine how sexual assault affects women’s long-term employment, earnings, and mental health. Using Finnish police reports, hospital records, and administrative data from 2006–2019, they compare victims with similar women who were not assaulted. They find that sexual assault reduces employment by 6 percentage points (15%) and annual earnings by €1,500 (17%) over five years. Antidepressant use increases by 6 percentage points (28%). Economic losses persist for at least a decade. Women assaulted before age 21 are 10 percentage points less likely to graduate from college and 14 percentage points less likely to be employed at age 25.
Why This Article Was Selected for The Policy Scientist
Sexual assault has consequences extending far beyond immediate physical and psychological harm, affecting economic security, educational attainment, and long-term employment opportunities. Understanding these effects is particularly timely as policymakers examine the broader economic costs of violence and persistent gender disparities in labor markets. This study makes an important contribution by demonstrating that economic losses persist for years and extend to victims’ families and social networks. Finland’s comprehensive administrative records provide unusually strong longitudinal evidence, although generalizability to countries with different labor markets and social protections remains uncertain. The matched-control event studies and complementary causal identification strategies strengthen confidence in the findings.
Full Citation and Link to Article
Adams, A., Huttunen, K., Nix, E., & Zhang, N. (2026). The economic impacts of sexual assault. American Economic Review. Advance online publication (forthcoming).
Central Research Question
The central research question is whether sexual assault produces lasting economic consequences for women, particularly through reduced employment, lower earnings, and diminished educational attainment. The researchers also investigate whether sexual assault affects mental health, personal relationships, and the well-being of victims’ families and social networks. Their primary objective is to determine whether the consequences of sexual violence represent temporary disruptions or persistent changes in women's economic trajectories. By examining outcomes for as long as ten years after an assault, the study seeks to establish whether victimization produces substantial economic losses that conventional estimates of the costs of crime have overlooked.
The analysis distinguishes between women assaulted during adulthood and those assaulted during adolescence. For adult victims, the principal outcomes are employment, annual earnings, and mental health. For younger victims, the researchers examine subsequent college completion, employment, and mental health at age 25. This distinction recognizes that sexual assault may affect women differently depending on their stage of educational and professional development. The study also considers whether these consequences extend beyond victims themselves, affecting parents and classmates.
Previous Literature
Previous research has established that sexual assault produces substantial psychological and physical consequences, but evidence concerning its long-term economic effects remains limited. Rothbaum et al. (1992), Resick (1993), and Kilpatrick (1992) documented the psychological consequences of rape, including post-traumatic stress, depression, and suicidal behavior. Peterson et al. (2017, 2018) examined the economic burden of sexual violence, incorporating medical expenses, lost productivity, and other costs. However, these estimates generally emphasize immediate disruptions, often measuring productivity losses through self-reported workdays missed rather than changes in employment and earnings over many years.
More recent economic research has examined how exposure to violence affects labor market outcomes. Bindler and Ketel (2022a) used Dutch administrative records to investigate the economic consequences of criminal victimization, while Ornstein (2017) studied the health and employment effects of violent crime in Sweden. Research by Folke and Rickne (2022) and Bhuller et al. (2024) further examined the consequences of gender-based violence. The present study extends this literature by concentrating specifically on sexual assault and examining long-term outcomes through administrative records. It also contributes to research on the indirect effects of crime, including work by Carrell et al. (2018) on the consequences of domestic violence for children's peers.
Data
The researchers use population-wide administrative records from Finland, identifying sexual assaults reported to police or recorded in hospitals between 2006 and 2019. Police records identify incidents involving rape, aggravated rape, sexual abuse, coercion into sexual acts, sexual harassment, and attempted offenses. Hospital records provide additional information about sexual assaults that may not have been reported to police. Approximately 94% of identified victims are female, and the principal analysis concentrates on women.
These records are linked through individual identification numbers to national databases containing employment, earnings, educational attainment, prescription medications, hospital admissions, family relationships, and mortality. The resulting longitudinal data permit researchers to observe women's economic and health outcomes before and after an assault. The study also identifies parents and schoolmates, allowing researchers to investigate consequences beyond the individual victim.
The administrative records offer considerable advantages over retrospective surveys, particularly by providing objectively recorded economic outcomes over extended periods. Nevertheless, sexual assaults that never appear in police or hospital records remain unobserved. Consequently, the study's estimates primarily represent the experiences of women whose assaults were formally documented, potentially limiting their generalizability to all victims.
Methods
The researchers employ several complementary statistical strategies to estimate the causal effects of sexual assault. Their principal approach is a matched-control event study comparing women who experienced an assault with otherwise similar women who did not. Matching incorporates age, education, employment, earnings, relationship status, antidepressant prescriptions, and other characteristics measured before the assault. The analysis then examines differences in outcomes over time, controlling for calendar-year effects and differences between matched groups. Importantly, victims and comparison-group members exhibit nearly identical employment and earnings trends before the assault, strengthening the credibility of the estimated effects.
The researchers conduct additional tests to address the possibility that unobserved characteristics or other disruptive events explain the findings. One particularly important approach compares women assaulted at different ages, using women who experience sexual assault several years later as an alternative comparison group. This strategy reduces concerns that persistent differences between victims and nonvictims account for the results. For younger victims, whose employment histories are generally unavailable, the researchers compare educational and economic outcomes at age 25 among women with similar earlier academic performance, mental health, and family characteristics. Although these approaches strengthen causal inference, they cannot completely eliminate the possibility of unobserved factors influencing the estimates. The study does not employ randomized assignment.
Findings/Size Effects
Sexual assault produces substantial and persistent reductions in women's employment and earnings. Among women assaulted at age 21 or older, employment declines by approximately 6 percentage points during the five years following an assault, representing a 15% reduction relative to pre-assault employment levels. Annual earnings fall by approximately €1,500, equivalent to a 17% reduction. These losses do not disappear over time. Ten years after an assault, victims' employment remains approximately 9 percentage points below that of comparable women, while annual earnings are approximately €3,000 lower. These findings indicate that sexual assault changes women's long-term economic trajectories rather than producing only temporary employment disruptions.
The consequences extend to mental health and personal relationships. Antidepressant use increases by approximately 6 percentage points over the five years following an assault, representing a 28% increase relative to pre-assault levels. Immediately following an assault, antidepressant prescriptions increase by approximately 9 percentage points. The suicide rate among victims is 180% higher than among comparable women, although this is a relative difference rather than a percentage-point increase. Victims are also 8 percentage points less likely to be living with a partner five years after an assault. The economic consequences are generally smaller among women with college degrees or cohabiting partners, suggesting that educational attainment and existing relationships may moderate some effects.
Adolescent victims experience particularly consequential disruptions during the transition from education to employment. Women assaulted before age 21 are approximately 10 percentage points less likely to complete college and 14 percentage points less likely to be employed at age 25 than comparable women. Their probability of receiving antidepressant prescriptions is 6 percentage points higher. The decline in college completion is especially pronounced among adolescents with stronger academic performance before victimization, indicating that sexual assault may substantially alter educational trajectories even among students who previously demonstrated considerable academic potential.
The researchers also identify consequences for individuals who were not directly assaulted. Mothers of victims experience a 2.1-percentage-point increase in antidepressant prescriptions within five years, while fathers experience a 1.3-percentage-point increase. Female classmates also demonstrate deteriorating mental health, equivalent to approximately one additional girl receiving antidepressants for every five school classes experiencing an assault involving a classmate. No comparable effect is identified among male classmates. These findings demonstrate that the consequences of sexual assault extend beyond individual victims into families and peer networks.
Conclusion
The study provides evidence that sexual assault imposes substantial, long-lasting economic and psychological costs on women, with additional consequences for their families and classmates. Its principal contribution is establishing that these effects persist for at least a decade and are considerably broader than the immediate medical expenses and lost workdays emphasized in previous research. The estimated reductions in employment, earnings, and educational attainment suggest that conventional calculations substantially understate the economic consequences of sexual violence.
The findings also demonstrate the importance of considering indirect effects when estimating the broader costs of crime. Finland's comprehensive administrative records and multiple causal identification strategies provide unusually detailed evidence of these consequences. Nevertheless, underreporting and differences between Finland's institutions and those of other countries remain important limitations. The results establish a foundation for future research examining whether criminal justice responses, mental health services, and employment assistance can reduce the persistent economic consequences of sexual assault.
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