Intimate partner violence and contraceptive use in developing countries:How does the relationship depend on context?

Abstract

BACKGROUND Reducing domestic violence and increasing contraceptive use are two ways to improve women’s health in developing countries. Social scientists debate whether women’sexperiences of intimate partner violence influence contraceptive use. The empiricalevidence evaluating the relationship yields inconsistent results. These contradictoryfindings might be due to specific regional conditions that moderate the relationship.METHODSUsing 30 panels of DHS data from 17 developing countries, this study examines therelationship between intimate partner violence and contraceptive use in a cross-nationalcomparison and assesses whether this relationship is moderated by macro contextualfactors, including the presence or absence of legal regulations against domestic violenceand the national level of female empowerment.RESULTSExperience of either physical or sexual violence is associated with an increase incontraceptive use, and is statistically significant in a cross-national setting. Themagnitude of the positive relationship between physical and sexual violence andcontraceptive use decreases in the presence of legal regulations against domesticviolence. The positive association of sexual violence with contraceptive use decreasesin contexts with higher levels of women’s empowerment. However, there is no changein the positive association between physical violence and contraceptive use in contextswith higher levels of women’s empowerment. These results are robust to additionalsensitivity tests.CONTRIBUTIONThis study demonstrates how macro contexts moderate the relationship betweenintimate partner violence and contraceptive use. The results inform and reconcileprevious findings by demonstrating that the positive relationship between women’sexperience of violence by an intimate partner and contraceptive use can be attenuatedwhen structural conditions change – namely, adoption of legal protections andimproved women’s empowerment