Injuries/Violence
Evaluation of domestic violence legislation to reduce intimate partner violence in India: a difference-in-differences analysis across 28 Indian states Robin Richardson* Robin Richardson Soohyeon Ko Eva Portillo Molina
In 2005, India enacted comprehensive legislation to confront household violence. In this analysis, we evaluate the impact of state-level implementation on women’s intimate partner violence (IPV) across 28 Indian states. We used state-level implementation information, including amount of state budget earmarked for the legislation, the number of newly created, specialized police officer positions trained in domestic violence, and the number of community-based organizations providing services to victims of violence funded through the legislation. We linked state-level implementation data with individual-level IPV data collected in population-based, repeated cross-sectional surveys conducted before (2005/2006) and after adoption of legislation (2015/16). Presence of IPV was captured with 12 questions about specific physical, sexual, or emotional abuse acts (e.g., husband ever slapped you). We used a difference-in-differences study design to evaluate the impact of implementation on IPV using linear regression models that controlled for country, year, individual-level factors (e.g., educational attainment) and time-varying state-level factors (e.g., state-level literacy rate), and estimated variances that accounted for state-level clustering. Using these model results, we estimated marginal changes in IPV prevalence between states with low vs high implementation (25th vs 75th percentile) to derive Prevalence Differences (PD) in IPV. Among the 124,156 women included in the study, 24.8% reported experiencing IPV. In fully adjusted models, more funded service providers corresponded to reductions in IPV (PD = 1.6%, 95% CI: -2.4%, -0.9%). However, amount of state-level budget allocated to legislation (PD = 2.2%, 95% CI: -1.0%, 5.5%) and number of specialized police officer positions (PD = -1.0%, 95% CI: -2.6%, 0.6%) was not associated with changes in IPV. Our results demonstrate that degree of implementation, as well as implementation activities, impact policy effectiveness.