Does Primary Education Affect Intimate Partner Violence Against Women? Evidence from Malawi

Abstract: This paper studies the causal effect of educational attainment on the experience of intimate partner violence and attitudes toward intimate partner violence in Malawi. Using data from the Demographic Health Survey, this paper takes advantage of the implementation of the Universal Primary education reform in Malawi in 1994 as a natural experiment. Exploiting differences in program exposure by district and age to determine treatment status, this paper uses a difference-in-difference and instrumental variable approach to model the relationship between educational attainment and the experience of and attitudes toward intimate partner violence. The result suggests that women exposed to the Universal Primary Education reform are more likely to justify intimate partner violence and experience sexual violence, and at the same time they are less likely to experience control behavior from their spouse.