Power to choose? Examining the link between contraceptive use and domestic violence. A new GLO Discussion Paper by GLO Fellow Manini Ojha and Karan Babbar.

A new GLO Discussion Paper finds for India that if the decision to use contraceptives is solely taken by the woman, she is at a significantly higher risk of physical, sexual and emotional domestic violence.

Manini Ojha

GLO Discussion Paper No. 1336, 2023

Power to choose? Examining the link between contraceptive use and domestic violence – Download PDF
by Ojha, Manini & Babbar, Karan

GLO Fellow Manini Ojha

Author Abstract: Contraception is a crucial tool that empowers women to control their bodily autonomy. Concurrently, violence against women remains a pressing public-health issue depleting women’s autonomy. We establish a causal link between the decision to use contraception and the occurrence of intimate partner violence. Utilizing newly available nationally representative data for India, we use an instrumental variable approach to estimate our causal effects. Using exogenous variation in the cluster average of women’s exposure to family planning messages via radio, we find that if the decision to use contraceptives is solely taken by the woman, she is at a significantly higher risk of physical, sexual and emotional domestic violence. We estimate bounds of our effects by assuming the IV to be plausibly exogenous where we relax the exogeneity condition. Our findings underscore the importance of reproductive health in initiatives that reduce domestic violence and targeted policies towards men’s understanding of family planning.

Journal of Population Economics (JOPE)
JOPE (2022): CiteScore 9.2 (LINK) & Impact Factor 6.1; 524 K Downloads

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ONLINE FIRST: 32 articles forthcoming in Volume 36, Issue 4, 2023. Covered issues: Historical demography; fertility and marriage; migration and refugee issues; health, vaccinations, risky behaviors; education; retirement; gender issues and preferences

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JOPE invites paper submissions for the following collections:
– Abortions
– Covid-19 and diseases
– Lifecycle fertility models
– Sexual and domestic violence
– Sexuality including LGBT issues
– Statistics & measurement of population economics

For more details and for examples of already published papers in these collections see: 
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