Re-examining the effects of drought on intimate-partner violence.

Matthew Cooper,Beliyou Haile,Yeyoung Lee,Carlo Azzari,Sveva Vitellozzi,Austin Sandler,Greg Seymour,Shah Md Atiqul Haq

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0254346

Abstract

Droughts are associated with several societal ills, especially in developing economies that rely on rainfed agriculture. Recently, researchers have begun to examine the effect of droughts on the risk of Intimate-Partner Violence (IPV), but so far this work has led to inconclusive results. For example, two large recent studies analyzed comparable data from multiple sub-Saharan African countries and drew opposite conclusions. We attempt to resolve this apparent paradox by replicating previous analyses with the largest data set yet assembled to study drought and IPV. Integrating the methods of previous studies and taking particular care to control for spatial autocorrelation, we find little association between drought and most forms of IPV, although we do find evidence of associations between drought and women's partners exhibiting controlling behaviors. Moreover, we do not find significant heterogeneous effects based on wealth, employment, household drinking water sources, or urban-rural locality.

Highlights

According to the Violence Against Women and Girls Series commissioned by The Lancet, “The elimination of violence against women and girls is central to equitable and sustainable social and economic development” [1]
We draw on data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which contain geolocated data from developing countries around the world provided by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID [70]
We used the definitions of drought shared by both researchers based on rainfall percentiles in the year before the DHS survey, as well as the covariates used by Epstein et al and controlling for spatial autocorrelation in the manner of Cools et al Our analysis showed that, using this definition of drought and these methodological approaches, there is no evidence of an association between drought and forms of Intimate-Partner Violence (IPV) outside of controlling violence

Summary

Introduction

According to the Violence Against Women and Girls Series commissioned by The Lancet, “The elimination of violence against women and girls is central to equitable and sustainable social and economic development” [1]. Intimate partner violence, or IPV, is a major source of physical and psychological suffering for women all over the world, affecting an estimated 30% of women globally, with higher rates in developing countries [2]. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines IPV as physical violence, sexual violence, stalking, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse [3]. Climate shocks can have a variety of impacts on human well-being, and many of these impacts more severely effect women. In many contexts women farm different crops with different inputs than men [4,5,6]. Women’s welfare is more affected by weather variability [7, 8] and droughts [9], especially in arid and semi-arid regions

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