Reducing intimate partner violence through cash transfers: The next research frontier

Cash transfers are promising interventions to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV), but more evidence is needed to better understand their effects in both development and humanitarian settings. This was the main message from a side event at the 63rd Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) in New York March 13. In keeping with this year’s CSW theme—social protection systems, access to public services, and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls—presenters outlined evidence from around the world on leveraging cash transfers to reduce IPV at scale.

The need for scalable solutions to IPV is evident when we look at the numbers. Globally, 1 in 3 women over the age of 15 experience physical or sexual IPV in their lifetimes. While an estimated 2.5 billion people benefit from social safety nets in low- and middle-income countries, little is known about their effects on intra-household dynamics. Research highlighted at the event is helping to close these gaps in the evidence and shows that cash transfers have reduced IPV in many settings.

Theresia Thylin of UN Women previewed new evidence from a forthcoming study of the Asraq refugee camp in Jordan. Women taking part in UN Women’s cash for work program (which combines cash transfers with access to public spaces) experienced a 20% decrease in IPV.

“We now have strong evidence that cash transfers are proven structural interventions to reduce IPV at scale,” said The Prevention Collaborative’s Lori Heise. But scaling up remains a major challenge for addressing IPV, Heise said. Many programs that reduce violence are intensive and reach only small geographic areas. To reduce IPV at a much larger scale, we should think creatively about leveraging existing programs or platforms—including cash transfers—in order to maximize their positive impacts on IPV and minimize their negative impacts.

A recent review of 22 studies on cash transfers and IPV, Heise said, found that although these programs focused on different policy objectives (namely poverty and food insecurity), they also had an unexpected secondary outcome of reducing violence. Overall more than 70% of studies showed reductions in IPV, with measured decreases in IPV ranging from 11% to as much as 66%. More evidence on how program design across regions affects impacts on IPV, Heise said.

“If cash is reducing violence, why is it doing so and through what pathways?" she said. "If we can understand this, we have a better idea of how we can tweak programs to promote this and get the most benefit in terms of reductions in family violence.” 

Tia Palermo of UNICEF Innocenti noted more existing gaps in the evidence, including scarce evidence on large-scale programming outside of Latin America, insufficient understanding of dynamics around “cash plus” programs, and few quantitative studies studying pathways for reduced violence. Using evidence from the Transfer Project, (a consortium between UNICEF, FAO, and UNC Chapel Hill), Palermo presented results from Ghana’s integrated social protection program, LEAP 1000, which combines cash transfers to pregnant and lactating women plus health insurance waivers. The target group was particularly vulnerable—poor, rural, and pregnant or recently pregnant—with IPV rates nearly double the national average. While LEAP reduced frequency of IPV overall, the study found that family structure and composition matter, with women in non-polygamous partnerships more likely to report reductions in any experience of IPV than women in polygamous partnerships.

“These results underscore that cash transfers can improve well-being beyond primary program objectives," Palermo said.

A recent IFPRI study in Bangladesh, presented by Shalini Roy, also addresses evidence gaps, including on sustainability of impacts on IPV after a program ends, the relative contribution of cash vs. other program components, and effects in Asia. The study evaluated a program providing cash or food transfers to poor rural women, with or without nutrition behavior change communication (BCC). Although the program had no explicit gender objective, the study found that cash or food transfers coupled with BCC led to a 26% sustained reduction in physical IPV. Evidence suggests the combination of transfers and BCC improved women’s status in their households and communities, leading to sustained increases in women’s bargaining power, their husbands’ costs of inflicting violence, and their households’ economic security.

“While transfers alone reduced IPV during the program, the addition of BCC was required to sustain impacts after the program ended,” Roy said. 

Kathryn Falb of the International Rescue Committee outlined several features of cash transfer programming in humanitarian settings. The differences with a development setting could lead to different dynamics; for instance, humanitarian transfers are often short-term or one-off. A non-experimental study from Raqqa, Syria, found that cash helped families meet their basic needs and reduce negative coping strategies. It found no decrease in household stress and increased reporting in IPV over the program period; however, causality cannot be inferred given the design.

This emerging evidence is helping policymakers design and implement cash transfer programming that better accounts for gender dynamics. Sarah Mshiu, of Tanzania’s Prime Minister’s Office, remarked that the studies are useful to governments in Africa and can help inform social protection programming in the region.

This event showcased a multitude of emerging evidence addressing the gaps in what we know about cash transfers and IPV. Interestingly, much of the existing research comes from programs that were not focused on addressing IPV, yet it has provided strong evidence that cash transfers can be applied as structural interventions to reduce IPV at scale. Armed with this evidence, we hope further investments will be made in rigorous, long-term studies to close research gaps and fully leverage cash transfers to reduce violence.

Angie Lee is a Research Uptake Specialist with UNICEF Innocenti and the Transfer Project.

This event was hosted by UN Women, represented by Theresia Thylin; Sida, represented by Eva Johansson; and Tanzania’s Prime Minister’s Office, represented by Sarah Mshiu. See highlights from the event on Twitter. IFPRI hosts the Cash Transfer and Intimate Partner Violence Research Collaborative, a group of researchers investigating the impacts of cash transfers on violence.