Shifting Attitudes towards Domestic Violence: The Impact of Primary Education on Women’s Marital Outcomes in Benin

Abstract

Abstract The paper examines the effect of a primary education program in Benin on women’s marital outcomes. The study leverages a sharp increase in the construction of schools in the 1990s to assess the causal impact of an increase in primary-school supply on primary-school attendance, employment, marital outcomes, and experience and tolerance of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using quasi-experimental geographical and historical variations in the number of schools built, the results indicate that in rural areas the school building program increased the probability of attending primary school and increased the age at marriage and at first child. It decreased the probability that women find domestic violence justified and that they experience emotional IPV. The effects are driven by women’s own increase in education rather than their husbands’.