Intimate partner violence and female property rights

Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects 30% of ever-partnered women worldwide. This study demonstrates how stronger female marital property rights can lead to lower levels of IPV. If women are financially protected outside of marriage, they in turn experience lower levels of violence inside marriage. Using a natural experiment from the colonization of Sub-Saharan Africa, this study aims to isolate the direct effect of large-scale changes to women's property rights from other IPV risk factors. The findings show that more equitable marital property rights could both reduce the incidence of IPV and also increase women's own condemnation of the violence. The empirical estimates suggest that legal property reform could render at least 12 million women less vulnerable to IPV across Sub-Saharan Africa.