Cash transfers coupled with behavior change communication sustainably reduce violence against women

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is pervasive globally, with estimates showing that one in three adult women worldwide has experienced some form of IPV. Much of the existing research on the effects of cash transfers on IPV has been conducted in Latin America, but South Asia has among the highest regional rates of IPV in the world, with 41 percent prevalence. In rural Bangladesh, this number is even higher, with over 70 percent of married women having experienced IPV according to some sources.

Forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics, and jointly authored by IFPRI’s Shalini Roy, Melissa Hidrobo, Akhter Ahmed, and Cornell’s John Hoddinott, the paper “Transfers, behavior change communication, and intimate partner violence: Post-program evidence from rural Bangladesh” examines how providing cash or food transfers to very poor women in Bangladesh – with or without intensive nutrition behavior change communication – affected IPV.