The impact of household shocks on domestic violence: Evidence from Tanzania

Abstract: In this paper we study the effects of household shocks on the incidence of domestic violence in Tanzania using a unique set of microdata from the LSMS household surveys. We use idiosyncratic variation in rainfall as credible exogenous shock to Tanzanian households predominantly active in the agricultural sector. We find that rainfall shocks increase the incidence of domestic violence in the household and these results are robust to the inclusion of a large set of potential confounding variables on the individual, household and community level. In particular, a one standard deviation negative rainfall shock increases the probability of DV by 0.10. This effect is stronger for married women, while we find no effect for children consistent with strategic use of violence in the intra-household resource distribution.

Paper written by Dr Martin Koppensteiner and Olukorede Abiona.