The anti-domestic violence law and women's welfare: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

Xin Gu, Hao Li and Langchuan Peng

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 202, issue C, 1-16

Abstract: China's first national Anti-Domestic Violence Law was enacted in March 2016. It offers legal protection to the victims of domestic violence. This paper estimates the intent-to-treat effect of its implementation on women's welfare. Using a nationally representative dataset, our difference-in-differences estimator shows that the law has significantly increased the life satisfaction of married women. Further exploration shows that the increase in life satisfaction is greater for women with higher salaries, better education, and of younger age than their respective counterparts. The increase in life satisfaction is realized through women's increased self-confidence, health status, and intra-household bargaining power as measured by household expenditures on goods favored by women. We also show that the law's implementation might have a broader effect on women's social status, reflected through their increased probability of being promoted and higher salaries.

Keywords: Domestic violence; Life satisfaction; Intra-household bargaining power; Anti-domestic violence law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J1 K3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122002621
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:202:y:2022:i:c:p:1-16

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.07.028

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().