page_title: Domestic violence in the United States
section_title: Murder
hierarchical_section_title: Domestic violence in the United States / Incidence / Statistics / Murder
context_page_description: Domestic violence in United States is a form of violence that occurs within a domestic relationship. Although domestic violence often occurs between partners in the context of an intimate relationship, it may also describe other household violence, such as violence against a child, by a child against a parent or violence between siblings in the same household. It is recognized as an important social problem by governmental and non-governmental agencies, and various Violence Against Women Acts have been passed by the US Congress in an attempt to stem this tide.
  Victimization from domestic violence transcends the boundaries of gender and sexual orientation. Women are more often the victims of domestic violence, and are more likely than men to suffer injuries or health consequences as a result of the incidents, but men are also subject to domestic violence in significant numbers, including in incidents of physical partner violence. Significant percentages of LGBT couples also face domestic violence issues. Social and economically disadvantaged groups in the U.S. regularly face worse rates of domestic violence than other groups.
context_section_description: Women are more likely than men to be murdered by an intimate partner. Of those killed by an intimate partner, about three quarters are female and about a quarter are male. In 1999 in the United States, 1,218 women and 424 men were killed by an intimate partner, and 1,181 females and 329 males were killed by their intimate partners in 2005.
  In 2007, 2,340 deaths were caused by intimate partner violence—making up 14% of all homicides. 70% of these deaths were females and 30% were males.
caption: Comparative rates of homicides involving family members between 1980 and 2008.  Killing by a spouse or ex-spouse exceeds the rate of all other categories.  In proportion to the total number of family homicides, killing by spouses and ex-spouses fell from 52% to 37% during this period.[61]