Natural Disasters and Acceptance of Domestic Violence

Natural disasters cause economic losses and are expected to become more frequent due to climate change. While economic consequences of natural disasters have been well-documented by research, their intangible effects have received less attention. This article studies the effect of natural disasters on attitudes toward domestic violence. The study estimates the impact of the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake in Indonesia on acceptance of wife beating using a difference-in-differences approach. Overall, findings show that the earthquake did not have a statistically significant effect on acceptance of domestic violence despite having a sizable impact on household assets and employment. This null effect masks heterogeneous effects between rural and urban residents: rural women’s acceptance of domestic violence was reduced in the medium and long run, and urban men’s acceptance decreased in the short run, but the decrease did not persist over time. The results are not driven by pre-existing differential trends or compositional changes.HIGHLIGHTS Natural disasters shape gender norms and impact attitudes toward domestic violence.In the case of the 2006 destructive earthquake in Indonesia, overall, women’s and men’s acceptance of wife beating was not affected.The earthquake reduced rural women’s tolerance for domestic violence in the medium and long run.