Weather Shocks and Violence against Women in Sub-Saharan Africa
Publisher: Center for Effective Global Action
Author(s): Sara Cools, Martin Flatø, and Andreas Kotsadam
Date: 2015
Topics: Climate Change, Conflict Prevention, Gender, Monitoring and Evaluation, Protection and Access to Justice
This study uses variation in rainfall to study how extreme shocks to income affect intimate partner violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. It finds that women experiencing a recent drought are more likely to have been abused during the last year. Though these weather shocks happen randomly, their spatial correlation likely causes bias in the cross-sectional analysis. Using repeated surveys and controlling for area fixed effects, we find that women in the same location are more likely to report abuse in surveys following a drought. Duration analysis shows that drought-induced income shocks do not affect women’s overall risk of being abused for the first time in their marriage, but in cases where the household members’ income is affected asymmetrically, the shocks give higher risk of abuse.