Education is a Remedy for Domestic Violence: Evidence from a Schooling Law Change

This paper explores the relationship between female education and domestic violence by utilizing a change in compulsory schooling. We replicate the study of Erten and Keskin (2018) using a more recent dataset. Contrary to their findings, we show that the reform induced increase in schooling for women reduces physical and sexual violence while social and financial control behaviors remain unchanged. Improvements in marriage market outcomes seem to be the dominant channel through which education affects domestic violence. Better education has improved partner quality, whereas women’s gender attitudes and labor market outcomes have not changed.