Alcohol Consumption and Intimate Partner Violence: Causal Evidence from India

A study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows that about 35% of women in the world have been victims of physical or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetime. In this paper, I study the causal impact of alcohol consumption on IPV using nationally representative data from the Demographic and Health Survey in India. To address potential endogeneity concerns, I exploit the spatial variation in alcohol ban and minimum legal drinking age across states to instrument for husband’s alcohol consumption. The instrumental variable estimates show that alcohol consumption by the husband increases prevalence of less severe and severe physical violence by 55 and 24 percentage points respectively. I further show that the results are not driven by ‘unobservables’ such as gender attitudes. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that there exists a vicious cycle of IPV whereby vulnerable individuals residing in poorly constructed houses or with previous exposure to domestic abuse are more susceptible.