The Impacts of Education on Domestic Violence: Evidence from China

Exploiting the Compulsory Schooling Law reform in China, this paper investigates the causal impact of education on the likelihood of women experiencing domestic violence from their spouse. The local average treatment effects (LATE) obtained through the instrument variables approach indicate that one additional year of schooling lowers women’s likelihood of experiencing physical and sexual abuse from their spouse by 7.1 and 3.4 percentage points, respectively. Further, we find that the causal impacts of education are more pronounced in the subsample of women who are less educated, women in rural areas, and women in regions with relatively lower human capital endowment prior to the reform. Additionally, we explore various channels and find that change in attitudes towards gender roles may be an important channel explaining the impact of increased female education on lowering domestic violence. We also address the possible bias caused by migration of individuals, and our results remain robust.