Speaker Nicolas Pazos - Female Labor Demand and Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence from Peru's Blueberry Export Industry
- Sponsor
- IPAD (International Policy and Development)
- Speaker
- Nicolas Pazos, PhD Student, Dept ACE, UIUC
- Views
- 10
- Originating Calendar
- ACE Seminars
Abstract:
The effects of women's labor force participation on intimate partner violence (IPV) remain an ongoing debate: some studies find that increased bargaining power reduces IPV, while others find evidence of increases due to male backlash. In this paper, we estimate the causal effects of an increase in labor demand from the agricultural export sector on IPV in Peru. Combining a pooled cross-section of women from the ENDES survey with firm-level export data, we leverage variation in blueberry export quantities across space and time to identify the causal effect of labor demand on IPV. We find that exposure within 5km of blueberry production reduces the probability of IPV by 3 percentage points for each additional 10,000 MT of exports (approximately 3.5% of Peru's annual blueberry exports), which represents a 5% reduction relative to the sample mean of 57%. We also find increases in women's labor force participation, consistent with a labor market mechanism, as well as improvements in household decision-making that suggest broader gains in women's agency.