Know Economic Abuse 2020 Report
The Co-operative Bank and Refuge, the UKs largest national domestic abuse charity, have released their “Know Economic Abuse” report – five years on from launching landmark campaign to tackle economic abuse.
Opinium conducted two nationally representative surveys to gain insights for the report. The survey focused on the experience of economic abuse, the long-term impact of economic abuse and help-seeking behaviours, including the responses of organisations or individuals to whom survivors of economic abuse reached out to for support.
The “Know Economic Abuse” campaign aims to raise awareness of the true scale of economic abuse in the UK. Economic Abuse – sometimes called financial abuse – occurs when someone attempts to control another’s ability to acquire, maintain access to, or use money or other economic resources on a sustained basis.
Key findings:
- 16% of adults in the UK (8.7 million people) say that they have experienced economic abuse
- 39% of UK adults have experienced behaviours which suggest they have experienced economic abuse, but they didn’t recognise it as such
- 10% of those who have experienced abuse (nearly a million people) say that abuse is currently ongoing
- 85% of people who experienced economic abuse also experienced other forms of domestic abuse
- Following economic abuse, one in five survivors (21%) have debts which they feel unable to repay
- For 3% of all UK adults (1.6 million people) the economic abuse started during the coronavirus pandemic
- For more than one in three (35%) of those who first experienced economic abuse during the coronavirus pandemic, their partner first became abusive when their pay decreased as a result of the lockdown
Read the full report here:
