Econ Seminar: Deniz Sanin (University of South Carolina)

https://sabanciuniv.zoom.us/j/91383976765

Women's Employment, Husbands' Economic Self-Interest and Domestic Violence

This paper presents evidence that providing employment opportunities to women decreases domestic violence when the husband has economic self-interest in the wife’s work capacity. I use the government-induced rapid expansion of the coffee mills in Rwanda in the 2000s, which increased the value of coffee farmer couples’ output and provided wage employment for women. Since the mill operates only during the harvest months, the husband’s cost of incapacitating his wife changes within the year. This variation, in conjunction with monthly administrative records on domestic violence hospitalizations, provides a way to distinguish the incapacitation cost mechanism from the rise in women’s bargaining power and household income, which are identified by multiple rounds of household survey data.

The paper is available clicking here at this link