The accepted wisdom is that welfare benefits enable women to escape violence. This assertion is frequently used to reject any moves to reform the DPB. But turning this belief on its head, the evidence shows that welfare is actually making many women more vulnerable to violence.

Women who are beneficiaries have a four-fold risk of experiencing partner violence according to the New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey 2006 published last month as part of the Families Commission report, Family Violence Statistics.

In answering the question, who was most at risk of partner violence, the survey found risks were considerably higher for people in sole-parent households; Maori women had risks three times the average for women overall; women who were beneficiaries had risks over four times the average; women living in the most deprived areas were at higher risk; young people aged 15-24 were at higher risk, as well as those living as flatmates or in rented accommodation. Those living in sole parent households have an incidence rate of experiencing partner violence more than 5 times greater than those living as a couple with children.

The profile typically fits the thousands of young, disproportionately Maori, single parents living on the domestic purposes benefit, in deprived neighbourhoods, in state or other rental properties. The new information is hugely important because it confirms that far from relieving women of partner violence, one of the stated original purposes behind the DPB, receiving a benefit actually heightens the risk of it.

Why? Because a welfare income is regular and secure it comes with free, or subsidised, accommodation and all sorts of financial back-ups. This makes single mothers attractive to men who have no interest in supporting a family (but do want a roof over their head and sex on demand.) These are often men who like to control women financially and physically. Unfortunately they often have short fuses and are entirely unsuited to living with young children.

Soon-to-be ex Green MP Sue Bradford recently said, "To remove it [DPB] would be one of the most evil things we could do to our women and children." It would mean a return to times when women 'were dependent on men often (suffering) humiliation and physical violence."

Yet the domestic violence is frequently a feature of relationships supported by welfare and was acknowledged by the 1996 Ruka Ruling. The Court of Appeal agreed that a woman who was living in a de facto relationship featuring violence and a lack of emotional or financial support from the partner, should be entitled to continue receiving state support - usually the DPB. This means the taxpayer actually pays for a woman to live with violence.

Every year thousands of uneducated and unskilled young women enter the welfare system and begin receiving benefits that increase the risk of experiencing partner violence. So long as the status quo remains, the welfare system is condemning many mothers and their children to the very lives Sue Bradford likes to think it frees them from.

Clearly there is a need for some sort of assistance when a woman decides to exit a dangerous and dysfunctional relationship. But if assistance became temporary only, the recipient stops being the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg. Women would make far more cautious choices about partnering and deadbeat men would cease to have their exploitive expectations met.

Guest post by Lindsay Mitchell.