DanArmak comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong

70 Post author: HughRistik 07 October 2009 04:35PM

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Comment author: DanArmak 08 October 2009 10:58:47PM *  6 points [-]

I've heard that lifetime incidence of being raped for women is about 3% worldwide.

That's much lower than the estimates I usually see. E.g., the Wikipedia article Estimates of sexual violence quotes a self-reported rate of 14.8% lifetime incidence among U.S. women, not counting failed rape attempts. This refers to this study[1], which quotes two previous studies with similar results, and also estimates a 22% lifetime incidence rate under a broader definition of sexual assault.

There are whole countries out there where the rape incidence in any single year is far above 3%. Even putting "unstable" countries and temporary situations (those lasting one generation or less) aside, there are many societies where the structure of marriage is such that we ought to estimate a daily incidence of rape, perhaps far above 50%.

[1] Tjaden P, Thoennes N. Full report of the prevalence, incidence and consequences of violence against women: findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Washington, DC, National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000 (NCJ 183781).

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 09 October 2009 01:50:24AM 1 point [-]

I wonder where I read 3% (it was very recent) - unfortunately all I can see now are order-of-magnitude higher estimates for what i presume is the broader category of "sexual assault".

You're right.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 09 October 2009 01:58:15AM 0 points [-]

I found my "source" - it was a blog comment

the UN gives an annual incidence for rape per 100,000 people. If we assume rapes of men or of women outside ages 15-50 are (fairly) negligible, then the victim pool is only about a third of the total pop, if that – giving a rate of 0.03% * 3 = 0.09% for the victim pool. Since women are in the pool for 35 years, that gives a lifetime prevalence of about 3.15% (leaving out the correction for a few individuals being victimized more than once). 3% is high.

I've seen 4-10% elsewhere.

Comment author: DanArmak 09 October 2009 02:05:06AM *  2 points [-]

That comment uses the figure quoted by the previous comment. But look at the pdf linked there for the UN report - that's not a number of rapes, that's a number of "crimes recorded in criminal police statistics!" No wonder it's much lower than the real figure. (I don't even know if it includes all reports/accusations or just counts found guilty by a court.)

Incidentally that document is missing some of the more interesting statistics for the US, while it has them for other countries. "Rape average prison sentence served" is one.

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