Spatial Spillover Effects: Domestic Violence in Nepal

This project uses household data from the 2011 and 2016 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) to provide a detailed assessment of the spatial relationship between neighboring households’ opinions and incidence of domestic violence. Despite the documented improvements in women’s economic status and the legal efforts to end abuse within the home, gender-based violence in Nepal remains unacceptably high. In 2016, one quarter of all ever-married women reported that they had experienced some sort of spousal violence, and if anything, rates of domestic violence have increased in recent years (NDHS Summary Report). We hypothesize a domestic violence spatial spillover effect in which an increase in domestic violence in one household or area increases the incidence of domestic violence in a neighboring one. Spatial econometric techniques, while not new to economics, are not commonly used in health economics, particularly at the individual level of analysis. This paper offers methods of adopting the techniques in the analysis of individual health.

This project utilizes multivariate regression analysis, grounded in a conceptual model of partner abuse with gender-specific levels of economic empowerment, to study the spatial nature of domestic violence through a bivariate and a multivariate spatial autoregression (SAR) model in which the proximity of domestic violence and related unobservable characteristics are explicitly included as determinants of domestic violence in a particular region or geographic cluster.

If spatial spillover effects are present, focusing policy efforts on reducing domestic violence in one area may reduce the incidence in neighboring areas, leading to an overall reduction across the country. Policies to educate men and women about the social, economic, and legal consequences of domestic violence can work to reduce the acceptance and justifiability of abusive behaviors. Spillover effects help to ensure that these effects can spread across households, which is key in curtailing and ending domestic violence in Nepal. Additionally, finding cost effective methods of reducing domestic violence in a poor country such as Nepal is ideal.

If such policies lead to real changes in the patriarchal culture where physical abuse is accepted, fewer children will be exposed to environments in which their mothers are abused. It has been found that boy children with mothers who are abused are more likely to become abusers themselves in adulthood, while girl children are more likely to enter an abusive intimate relationship as adults (Kishor & Johnson 2004). Breaking that cycle is a step towards permanent reductions in violence against women in the home.