Nearly two in five women aged 18 to 24 experienced economic abuse from a partner or ex-partner over the past 12 months

For International Women’s Day 2025, there has been a spotlight on the risks of economic abuse faced by younger women in the UK. Our survey for Surviving Economic Abuse found that nearly two in five women aged 18 to 24 (38%) had experienced economic abuse from a partner or ex-partner over the previous 12 months. This is equivalent to over 1 million women aged 18 to 24 in the UK.¹

Economic abuse involves a current or ex-partner controlling a victim-survivor’s money and the things that money can buy with long-lasting and damaging effects. 

Abusers control victim-survivors by monitoring their spending on banking apps, pushing them into debt by forcing them to buy things on credit they can’t afford, and destroying or damaging their belongings.

The survey, conducted for Surviving Economic Abuse and funded by VISION Consortium, found that among all younger women aged 18-24: 

• One in seven (14%) had a partner or ex-partner control, or deliberately deprive them of daily essentials (e.g. food, shampoo or sleep)
• One in six (18%) had a partner or ex-partner deliberately destroy or damage property or their belongings, for example, punched walls, threw or smashed things (e.g. a mobile phone)
• One in eight (12%) had a partner or ex-partner threaten to share explicit images of them (e.g. with their friends, family, or employer, etc.) unless they agreed to give them money

While nearly three-quarters of all younger UK women have heard of the term ‘economic abuse’, almost half of the younger women who experienced it did not identify their current or ex-partner’s economically controlling behaviour as abusive.

See SEA website for explanations of economic restriction, exploitation and sabotage.

For more information on this research, contact Dr Caroline Paskell, Ipsos, see SEA’s IWD coverage (March 2025) and read SEA’s report on the survey: Measuring Economic Abuse published on International Economic Abuse Awareness Day, 26 November 2024. See summaries of this and other Ipsos projects related to International Women’s Day here: International Women's Day: Spotlight Projects in Public Affairs | Ipsos

Technical note

The online survey was developed by Surviving Economic Abuse and Ipsos UK. A nationally representative sample of women aged 18+ was surveyed by Ipsos on behalf of Surviving Economic Abuse and were asked about their experiences of economic abuse from a current or former partner in the past 12 months.

A total of 2,849 women aged 18 and over responded to the survey between Friday 25th October and Friday 1st November 2024. The sample obtained is representative of this audience with quotas on age, region and working status. The data has been weighted to the known offline population proportions of this audience for age, government office region, social grade, education, working status and ethnicity.

Extrapolations: As a part of this research Ipsos and SEA have conducted extrapolations to understand the possible number of women who are affected by economic abuse.  These extrapolations have been conducted using the total population figure for Women aged 18+ in the United Kingdom as 26.89 million. Source: ONS Annual Population Survey for 2024 (July 2023- June 2024): Demographics for women aged 18 or over by ethnicity, UK, July 2023 to June 2024 - Office for National Statistics

¹ The survey finding is 38% of women aged 18-24, equivalent to 1.01 million women aged 18-24 in the UK. We can be 95% confident that the correct figure is +/-5.2% which is 32.8% - 43.2% (between an estimated 958,000 and 1.06 million). Base population source: ONS Annual Population Survey for 2024 (July 2023- June 2024).

Visit SEA’s website to find out more about their work and access information for victim-survivors, their friends and family and professionals: survivingeconomicabuse.org 

This work was supported by the VISION consortium, which is funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership, an initiative funded by UK Research and Innovation Councils, the Department of Health and Social Care (England) and the UK devolved administrations, and leading health research charities.