Description:

Siwan Anderson (UBC): "Harm and Harmony"

Abstract: Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects a third of women worldwide. It is important to understand the key drivers of IPV. We focus on the relationship between female autonomy and IPV. We first demonstrate a robust U-shaped relationship between a wife's relative decision making power and IPV in a very large representative sample from 45 developing countries. We argue that current household bargaining models of IPV cannot reconcile this stylized fact. We posit an alternative theoretical framework which incorporates notions from behavioural economics into the household bargaining framework. We model IPV as the unintended consequence of male violence from conflictual family interactions. The model is consistent with the patterns we observe in the data. Moreover, it makes several new policy predictions.