Domestic Violence

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Domestic violence is widespread across several countries. Approximately 30% of ever-partnered women in the world have experienced this type of aggression (García-Moreno, 2013). Domestic violence accounted for 58% of women homicides in the USA and 27% in Brazil in 2013 (Violence Policy Center, 2015; Ministério da Saúde, 2016).

 

The literature on the determinants of domestic violence usually analyzes the risk of aggression based on potential victims’s bargaining position in the household, which might be affected by policies that impact women’s employment and income (Aizer, 2010; Buller et al., 2018; Hidrobo et al., 2016) as well as divorce laws (Stevenson and Wolfers, 2006; Brassiolo, 2016); social norms (Alesina, Brioschi and La Ferrara, 2016); institutional changes, such as the creation of women’s police stations (Perova and Reynolds, 2015), increasing the proportion of women among police officers and politicians (Miller and Segal, 2018; Iyer et al., 2012), and legal reforms (Ferraz and Schiavon, 2019; Aizer and Dal Bó, 2009); and men’s desire for resources or partner control.