Reducing Intimate Partner Violence: Evidence from a Multifaceted Female Empowerment Program in Urban Liberia

Abstract

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a global public health challenge, but evaluating interventions to reduce IPV is challenging because the underlying factors of IPV are so intertwined that public health professionals recommend it be targeted in multiple directions. This paper evaluates a randomized controlled trial of a multifaceted female empowerment program in Monrovia, Liberia, where the baseline IPV prevalence is particularly high. The program intervention includes intensive psychosocial therapy and vocational skills training throughout a full year. About 12 months after program completion, we find the program significantly reduced the proportion of women who experienced emotional, physical, and sexual IPV by 10-26 percentage points (from control bases of 24-62 percent). While there are multiple pathways through which IPV could be impacted, one channel is that the business training was highly effective: labor supply increased by 37 percent and expenditure by 49 percent. One focus of the program is psychological empowerment, and we find positive but statistically insignificant effects on distress and happiness indices. We also find improvements in social norms around IPV: perceived justifiability of IPV reduced by 0.3 standard deviations. Importantly, the follow-up results approximately 3.5 years after the program’s conclusion remain robust, indicating the enduring impact of the intervention on reducing IPV.