American Economic Review Vol. 105 No. 5 2015

Can Alcohol Prohibition Reduce Violence Against Women?

Dara Lee Luca¹; Emily Owens²; Gunjan Sharma³

¹ John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Mailbox 4, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, and the University of Missouri (e-mail: ) · ² Department of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (e-mail: ) · ³ World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433 (e-mail: )

Abstract

Violence against women is a critical problem across the world. In this paper, we exploit state and temporal variation in alcohol control in India to examine the impact of prohibition on alcohol consumption and violent crimes against women. We first use detailed household survey data to show that prohibition policies are associated with substantially lower rates of drinking among men and domestic violence. Next, we provide evidence that alcohol prohibition reduces aggregate violence against women in officially reported crime data. The results suggest that policies that restrict access to alcohol may help reduce gender violence.

DOI

10.1257/aer.p20151120

Volume

105

Issue

5

Pages

625-629

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref openalex

Cite

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