IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cgd/wpaper/432.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Legislation on the Hazard of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Burkina Faso - Working Paper 432

Author

Listed:
  • Ben Crisman, Sarah Dykstra, Charles Kenny and Megan O'Donnell

Abstract

In 1996, Burkina Faso enacted legislation banning the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Much of the qualitative literature surrounding FGM/C discounts the impact of legal change on what is considered a social/cultural issue. We use data from the Demographic and Health Surveys DHS(VI) in Burkina Faso to test for a discontinuous change in the likelihood of being cut in the year the law was passed. We find robust evidence for a substantial drop in hazard rates in 1996 and investigate the heterogeneous impact of the law by region, religion, and ethnicity. Overall, we roughly estimate that over a ten year period the law averted the genital mutilation/cutting of approximately 237,591 women and girls. We qualify our findings recognizing that Burkina Faso is a special case with a long history of bottom-up and top-down approaches to eliminating the practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Ben Crisman, Sarah Dykstra, Charles Kenny and Megan O'Donnell, 2016. "The Impact of Legislation on the Hazard of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Burkina Faso - Working Paper 432," Working Papers 432, Center for Global Development.
    • Handle: RePEc:cgd:wpaper:432
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cgdev.org/publication/impact-legislation-hazard-female-genital-mutilationcutting-regression-discontinuity
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Garcia-Hombrados, Jorge & Pérez-Parra, Daniel & Ciacci, Ricardo, 2024. "Fast Internet, Women Identity, and Female Genital Mutilation," IZA Discussion Papers 17194, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. McGavock, Tamara & Novak, Lindsey, 2023. "Now, Later, or Never? Evidence of the effect of weather shocks on female genital cutting in Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    FGM/C; social norms; legal change; regression discontinuity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cgd:wpaper:432. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Publications Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cgdevus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.