Domestic Violence and Statistics

Matthew Yglesias has a post up analyzing the trends in intimate partmer murder. Key quotes:

The data seems to suggest that there is, in fact, a silver lining to the "decline of marriage" and a dark side to its promotion. The overall decline in intimate partner murder is composed entirely of a steep decline in spousal murder that has been only partially offset by an increase in boyfriend/girlfriend murder while ex murder has stayed pretty flat. At least one seemingly serious researcher I've read hypothesized that marriages are particularly likely to end in murder, because the high level of commitment tends to dissuade people from dissolving the relationship before problems get really out of hand. It's also interesting that intimate partner violence in general, when directed against women, has a very heavy class component, whereas the rarer intimate partner violence directed against men doesn't really.