A drop of love? Rainfall shocks and spousal abuse: Evidence from rural Peru

Juan Jose Diaz and Victor Saldarriaga

Journal of Health Economics, 2023, vol. 89, issue C

Abstract: We investigate whether exposure to rainfall shocks affects the experience of physical intimate partner violence (P-IPV) among women in rural areas of the Peruvian Andes. Using data from the Demographic and Health Surveys over 2005–2014, we track changes in the probability that a woman experiences recent instances of P-IPV after being exposed to a rainfall shock during the last cropping season. Our results indicate that the probability that a woman experiences P-IPV increases by 8.5 percentage points (65 percent) after exposure to a dry, but not a wet, shock during the cropping season. We identify two complementary causal pathways of this effect: increased economic insecurity and poverty-related stress that deteriorates men’s emotional well-being and mental health, and reduced female empowerment that affects women’s ability to negotiate their preferences within the relationship.

Keywords: Violence against women; Intimate partner violence; Developing countries; Rainfall shocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 D13 I10 I15 O13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629623000164
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: A Drop of Love? Rainfall Shocks and Spousal Abuse: Evidence from Rural Peru (2020)
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:jhecon:v:89:y:2023:i:c:s0167629623000164

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2023.102739

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().