AccScience Publishing / IJPS / Online First / DOI: 10.36922/ijps.3065
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Does drought increase intimate partner violence? Evidence from India

Durgesh C. Pathak1* Dipti Chhugani1
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1 Department of Economics and Finance, Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Submitted: 1 March 2024 | Accepted: 26 August 2024 | Published: 25 October 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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International Journal of Population Studies, Electronic ISSN: 2424-8606 Print ISSN: 2424-8150, Published by AccScience Publishing