We hosted a Development Seminar on “Unemployment and domestic violence new evidence from administrative data“ with
Dr. Sonia Bhalotra, Professor of Economics at University of Essex.

Abstract: This paper provides possibly the first causal estimates of how individual job loss among men influences the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV), distinguishing threats from assaults. The authors find a significant increase in the probability that displaced men commit IPV. They also find higher rates of IPV when the woman is unemployed. Further, they investigate IPV mitigation from unemployment insurance, leveraging a discontinuity in eligibility. The authors conclude with a discussion of the mechanisms driving the estimated relationships between unemployment and domestic violence. 

Speaker’s Bio: Professor Bhalotra’s research focuses on topics of child development, global health, gender and family economics, political economy, and intergenerational mobility. In her work, she has used micro-data from several developing countries, the UK, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and early-20th century America. She is a co-investigator of the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) Center for Microsocial Change, as well as the ESRC-funded program on Human Rights, Big Data & Technology. Prof. Bhalotra holds a D.Phil in Economics from Oxford.

Discussant:

Indira Jaising: Ms. Jaising is a noted human rights lawyer and a senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India. She co-founded the Lawyers’ Collective, a legal NGO that has been working since its inception in 1980 for the rights of the marginalised, particularly women, LGBTQ peoples, sex workers, and many more economically and socially disadvantaged groups. Jaising has fought and won a number of landmark legal battles, particularly those dealing with Christian women’s right to inherit property, right of the mother as the natural gurdian in child custody cases, or having the Supreme Court strike down instant Triple Talaq as unconstitutional.

Anoo Bhuyan: Anoo Bhuyan is a journalist at The Wire, based in New Delhi. She currently covers health policy and has reported on law and justice, and technology and society. She studied conflict and development studies at SOAS, University of London.