Who Drives What? Examining the Link between the Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence and Anaemia among Married Women

Indrani Roy Chowdhury, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Anusree Paul, BML Munjal University
Bhawna Taneja , Jawaharlal Nehru University

The grappling dual burden of anaemia and exposure to intimate partner violence among the ever-married women in India reflects a significant policy crisis in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Using the latest rounds of nationally representative datasets and matching methods, we provide robust evidence of the direct and reverse relationship between intimate partner violence and anaemia. Exposure to at least one form of IPV increases probability of being anaemic. Moreover, prevalence of anaemia has a significant likely impact on women facing at least one type of IPV. Since anaemia is associated with women’s reduced ability to manage multiple responsibilities efficiently like child care, elderly in-laws care, daily household tasks like cooking and cleaning, etc., it may, instigate the partner to indulge in violence. Given the reverse associations, we address the potential endogeneity through an instrumental variables approach. We used an exogenous variation of district-level prevalence of anaemia and age of the women during first birth as instruments for anaemia to establish the reverse causality. Our findings confirm the endogeneity and demonstrate a significantly larger effect size than that of the matching methods. The endogeneity is further examined through alternative estimation techniques and across different heterogeneous groups for robustness check.

Keywords: Families, Unions and Households, Econometrics , Qualitative data/methods/approaches, Gender Dynamics

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