Does drought increase intimate partner violence? Evidence from India

Abstract

India has a high prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) against women. IPV has been observed to increase during natural disasters. Many studies have attempted to unravel the effect of drought on IPV; however, the evidence remains mixed. There is a gap in such studies in the Indian context, and this study seeks to fill this gap. We used data from the National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4) (2015-2016) and NFHS-5 (2019 - 2021) to examine the effect of drought caused by the failure of the northeastern monsoon (NEM) in 2016 - 2018. Our analysis included data from 19 states and Union Territories of India ( N=34,590 ) in a difference-in-differences setup to evaluate the effect of the NEM drought on IPV. Exposure to the NEM drought was positively associated with physical violence (PV) and emotional violence, with results significant at the 95% and 99% confidence levels, respectively. A subsample analysis of rural and urban populations revealed that drought is significantly associated with an increase in sexual violence in urban areas, whereas it correlates with PV in rural areas. Additionally, exposure to drought is linked to a considerable rise in the controlling behavior of partners, for example, "He (is/was) jealous or angry if you (talk/talked) to other men,"'he (does/did) not permit you to meet your female friends)."These findings call for a two-fold policy action: providing support in the form of wage employment programs, subsidies, and other financial assistance during drought periods to help households cope with financial stress and implementing awareness programs aimed at changing partners' mindsets, thereby reducing controlling behaviors in marriages.

Keywords

Drought / India / Intimate partner violence / National family health survey

Acknowledgments

None.

Funding

None.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author contributions

Conceptualization: Durgesh C. Pathak

Formal analysis: Durgesh C. Pathak

Methodology: Durgesh C. Pathak

Writing-original draft: All authors

Writing-review & editing: Durgesh C. Pathak

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The DHS and the NFHS obtained informed and voluntary consent from all survey participants. Permission to use DHS/NFHS data for this study was granted through the DHS program when downloading the datasets. As this study involves the analysis of de-identified secondary data, specific ethics approval for this analysis was not required.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data

The study utilized secondary data from the DHS. The dataset is publicly accessible and can be obtained by registering on the DHS platform.

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