Absent laws and missing women: Can domestic violence legislation reduce female mortality?

• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Author: Mohammad Amin,Asif M. Islam,Augusto Lopez‐Claros
• Date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/rode.12799

Rev Dev Econ. 2021;25:2113–2132. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/rode

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© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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INTRODUCTION

In an influential article, Amartya Sen noted that over 100 million women were missing.1 Despite

biological advantages women have over men, in many places the ratio of women to men skews to-

ward men. A large literature has attempted to explain the drivers of adult mortality and explain why

there may be excess female mortality (Anderson & Ray,2010; Cutler et al.,2006). This study fo-

cuses on one particular candidate from the set of potential predictors— domestic violence legislation.

Fears of domestic violence have particularly risen since the COVID- 19 pandemic began. Studies

have noted a sharp increase in domestic violence as people shelter at home (Aguero,2021; Leslie &

Wilson,2020). A strand of the literature has also attempted to quantify the deaths due to domestic

Received: 4 May 2020

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Revised: 28 April 2021

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Accepted: 2 May 2021

DOI: 10.1111/rode.12799

REGULAR ARTICLE

Absent laws and missing women: Can domestic

violence legislation reduce female mortality?

MohammadAmin1,2

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Asif M.Islam3

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AugustoLopez- Claros4

1Enterprise Analysis Unit, World Bank

Country Office, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2Enterprise Analysis Unit, World Bank,

Washington, DC, USA

3Office of the Chief Economist, Middle

East and North Africa Region, World

Bank, Washington, DC, USA

4Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service,

Georgetown University, Washington, DC,

USA

Correspondence

Mohammad Amin, Enterprise Analysis

Unit, World Bank Country Office in Kuala

Lumpur, Malaysia.

Email: mamin@worldbank.org

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between the presence

of domestic violence legislation and the adult mortality of

women relative to men. Using a panel of 159 economies

between 1990 and 2014, domestic violence legislation is

found to be associated with a lower women- to- men adult

mortality ratio. The most conservative estimate suggests a

2.3% decline relative to the mean sample value. These find-

ings are extended to show that domestic violence legislation

is also negatively correlated with physical violence by inti-

mate partners for a cross- section of economies. Sensitivity

analyses reveal that the findings are robust to different esti-

mation methods and empirical specifications.

KEYWORDS

domestic violence, gender, laws, mortality, women

JEL CLASSIFICATION

J1; J16; K32

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violence, acknowledging hurdles in obtaining clean measures. Anderson and Ray (2010) report that

excess female deaths from “injuries”— in part resulting from domestic violence— were extremely high

in India in the year 2000, equaling 225,000. This is far greater than maternal mortality estimates. The

findings are likely to be on the conservative side given substantial under- reporting of domestic vio-

lence cases (Palermo etal.,2013).

Systematic and direct evidence on the impact of domestic violence legislation on female mortality

or well- being in general is limited. Beleche (2019) finds that across provinces in Mexico, legislation

criminalizing domestic violence is associated with a significant reduction in suicide rates among

women. Other studies have shown that the one- child law in China and sex- selective abortion laws have

significantly affected women- to- men mortality among newborns (Ebenstein,2010). Factors such as

education, employment, and political empowerment have been found to be important in affecting the

status of women, and thereby mortality rates. However, no study as of this writing provides any direct

evidence on the effect of domestic violence legislation on adult women mortality.

The number of economies implementing domestic violence legislation has increased dramatically

since 1990. Only 4 of the 159 countries in this study had implemented domestic violence legislation

in 1990. By 2014 this number rose to 89 economies. Little is known about the factors that contribute

to the adoption of domestic violence legislation. Suggestive evidence2 indicates a number of factors:

pressure exerted by those favoring a patriarchal structure, the presence of a wide and strong coalition in

favor of the legislation, and commitments to international conventions such as Committee to Eliminate

All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Council of Europe Convention on

preventing and combating violence against women (the Istanbul Convention). The literature on gender

disparity in the broader set of laws suggests that factors such as the momentum created by interna-

tional conventions like the CEDAW, strong rule of law, women's political empowerment, mobilization

of women's networks, and increasing labor force participation may promote the adoption of domestic

violence legislation (see, e.g., Hallward- Driemeier et al., 2013a; World Bank,2015).

This study contributes to the literature by estimating a reduced form relationship between domestic

violence legislation and women- to- men adult mortality ratio. Using panel data for 159 economies

between 1990 and 2014, this study finds that the presence of domestic violence legislation is associ-

ated with significantly lower women- to- men adult mortality ratio. Much attention is afforded to en-

dogeneity concerns, and various methods are used to address them. Despite these robustness checks,

due caution is necessary in interpreting the results as causal. The finding is robust to a host of con-

trols including overall economic development, health and disease prevalence, political empowerment,

education, employment, institutional environment, and gender- specific laws. We complement these

robustness checks with a falsification test where we replace the outcome variable with labor force par-

ticipation. We also use an instrumental variables (IV) approach. We use the human rights conventions

that specifically target violence against women in generating legislations to address domestic violence

to instrument for the adoption of domestic violence legislation, while accounting for general conven-

tions that promote gender equality overall. Our main findings are confirmed with the IV approach.

Our conservative baseline estimate suggests that domestic violence legislation lowers women- to- men

adult mortality ratio by about 2.3% of its mean value.

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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Economists have generally relied on the dependency theory and intra- household bargaining model of

domestic violence to motivate their empirical analysis. The dependency theory, originally attributed

to Gelles (1976), posits that women with more resources tend to have better options outside of abusive