Devika Hazra

Around the world, millions of women face the threat of violence from their intimate partners — a form of abuse that cuts across cultures, income levels, and geographies. While criminal justice responses and awareness campaigns are essential, researchers and policymakers have increasingly asked a different question: Can economic policy be part of the solution?

One policy tool that has gained significant attention is the conditional cash transfer (CCT) — a program that provides households with regular payments if they meet certain conditions, such as sending children to school, attending health checkups, etc. Initially designed to reduce poverty and improve human capital, CCTs have also been studied for their potential to influence household dynamics, including intimate partner violence (IPV).

How Cash Might Change Violence Dynamics?

There are three main pathways through which CCTs could reduce IPV

• Economic Empowerment – Regular cash inflows can give women greater financial independence, reducing their reliance on abusive partners and strengthening their bargaining power in the household.
• Bargaining Power – When transfers are directed to women, they can strengthen women’s decision-making ability within the household.
• Norm Shifts – Over time, economic empowerment may challenge traditional gender roles and make violence less socially acceptable.

In some settings, sudden shifts in household power can provoke male backlash from male partners who feel their authority is threatened. This underscores the importance of program design and community engagement.

What the Evidence Shows:

A growing body of research offers nuanced insights from Latin America, Africa, and Asia:

Latin America

• Peru’s JUNTOS Program (Diaz & Saldarriaga, 2022)
  Physical IPV dropped by 25–30% in rural areas after the rollout of JUNTOS, with effects lasting at least five years. The decline was linked not to women’s increased bargaining power, but to reduced alcohol consumption and lower poverty-related stress among men.
• Ecuador’s Cash, Voucher, and Food Transfers (Hidrobo, et. al., 2013; Hidrobo, et. al., 2016)
  A randomized trial found that giving women six months of cash, food vouchers, or food transfers reduced coercive control behavior and physical/sexual violence by 19–30%. Effects were similar across all transfer types. Another cash transfer program for mothers in Ecuador was found to reduce emotional abuse and coercive control by partners among more educated mothers. However, for less educated women, the impacts varied and could increase violence when their education matched or exceeded their partner’s.
• Brazil’s Bolsa Família (Litwin et al., 2019)
  While the program did not reduce severe violence as measured by female homicide rates, it increased separations, suggesting women had a greater ability to leave unsafe relationships.

Africa

• Tanzania’s Cash Plus Model (Palermo, et. al., 2021)
  When paired with life skills training, mentoring, and sexual/reproductive health education, transfers reduced some experiences and perpetration of violence among adolescents, indicating that “cash-plus” designs can be more effective than cash alone.
• Kenya’s Unconditional Transfers – GiveDirectly (Haushofer et al., 2019)
  Large, one-time transfers reduced physical and sexual IPV, especially when given to women, and even benefited non-recipient women in the same communities. Spillover effect included social norms change.

South Asia

• West Bengal’s Kanyashree Scheme (Banerjee & Sen, 2024)
  By tying cash transfers to girls’ continued schooling, the program reduced child marriage and increased education, labor force participation, and women’s household decision-making — long-term shifts that can lower IPV risk.
• Bangladesh’s Female Secondary School Stipend Program(Sara & Priyanka, 2023)
  A nationwide education-focused cash stipend program for adolescent girls reduced women’s long-term risk of intimate partner violence, mainly by keeping them in school longer, delaying marriage, and enabling them to marry better-educated partners.

The Bigger Picture

Most cash transfer programs are not designed with IPV reduction as an explicit goal. Yet evidence shows they can be a lever for gender equality and safer homes, particularly when combined with complementary interventions such as education around gender norms, legal protections, and accessible survivor services.

Therefore, design matters:

• Who receives the transfer?
• How is it framed (e.g., as household support vs. women’s empowerment)?
• The presence of community engagement components.

As governments and development agencies expand social protection, understanding these nuances can help ensure that programs not only fight poverty but also contribute to safer, more equitable homes. Reducing IPV is not only a matter of justice — it also has profound implications for public health, child welfare, and economic development.

References:

Banerjee, S., & Sen, G. (2024). Persistent effects of a conditional cash transfer: a case of empowering women through Kanyashree in India. Journal of Population Economics, 37(4), 66.

Díaz, J. J., & Saldarriaga, V. (2022). (Un)conditional love in the time of conditional cash transfers: The effect of the Peruvian Juntos program on spousal abuse. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 70(2), 865-899.

Hidrobo, M., & Fernald, L. (2013). Cash transfers and domestic violence. Journal of Health Economics, 32(1), 304-319.

Hidrobo, M., Peterman, A., & Heise, L. (2016). The effect of cash, vouchers, and food transfers on intimate partner violence: evidence from a randomized experiment in Northern Ecuador. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 8(3), 284-303.

Haushofer, J., Ringdal, C., Shapiro, J. P., & Wang, X. Y. (2019). Income changes and intimate partner violence: Evidence from unconditional cash transfers in Kenya (No. w25627). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Litwin, A., Perova, E., & Reynolds, S. A. (2019). A conditional cash transfer and Women’s empowerment: Does Bolsa Familia Influence intimate partner violence?. Social Science & Medicine, 238, 112462.

Palermo, T., Prencipe, L., Kajula, L., & Tanzania Cash Plus Evaluation Team. (2021). Effects of government-implemented cash plus model on violence experiences and perpetration among adolescents in Tanzania, 2018‒2019. American Journal of Public Health, 111(12), 2227-2238.

Sara, R., & Priyanka, S. (2023). Long-term effects of an education stipend program on domestic violence: Evidence from Bangladesh. The World Bank Economic Review, 37(4), 640-658.