ABSTRACT

Intimate partner violence (IPV) continues to be seen as justifiable in many cultures despite its devasting health effects on women. This paper proposes that the value of the traditional marriage payment-the dower-received by women at marriage constitutes a divorce constraint and influences their attitude toward Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Using novel data (JLMPS 2016), I provide the first empirical evidence of the dower’s effect on women’s well-being in Jordan where despite considerable public effort, IPV remains widely accepted. I estimate the effect of the dower’s value on women’s attitude toward IPV. Using an instrumental variable strategy, I proxy unusual cash inflows from Gulf countries to Jordan with the real international oil price variations to instrument the dower’s value. I find that a higher dower has a positive and significant impact on women’s likelihood of considering IPV justified in a variety of domestic contexts. When I investigate mechanisms, my results are consistent with an intra-household model predicting that a higher dower reduces women’s outside options, since women’s access to unilateral divorce in Jordan is conditional on repayment of the dower.