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Jobs and intimate partner violence – Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia

Last registered on November 10, 2017

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Jobs and intimate partner violence – Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0002569
Initial registration date
November 09, 2017

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
November 10, 2017, 3:58 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
University of Oslo

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
CMI

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2016-03-01
End date
2021-06-30
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Most previous evidence on employment and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is based on correlational studies. While correlations are illustrative they do not tell us whether employment affects IPV, whether IPV affects employment, or whether there is some other factor that affects both employment and IPV. Recent scholarship has also investigated the effects of contextual level employment level using Bartik instruments finding that when labor markets have better conditions for women, abuse decreases in the US and the UK but increases in areas of Spain where men are traditionally breadwinners. The present project is the first to identify the individual level effects of jobs on IPV. We do so by collaborating with large companies in Ethiopia to randomly assign jobs to applicants. In this plan we describe the analytic decisions that will be made in the analysis of the data in the project. That is, we describe the hypotheses to be tested and how they will be tested. The description includes how the variables are coded, how we will deal with attrition and missing values, and how the estimation equations will look like. We also conduct a power analysis which suggests that we are able to identify relatively small effects. All deviations from the plan will be highlighted in the final paper.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Kotsadam, Andreas and Espen Villanger. 2017. "Jobs and intimate partner violence – Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia." AEA RCT Registry. November 10. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2569-1.1
Former Citation
Kotsadam, Andreas and Espen Villanger. 2017. "Jobs and intimate partner violence – Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia." AEA RCT Registry. November 10. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2569/history/198163
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
See plan.
Intervention (Hidden)
Intervention Start Date
2016-03-01
Intervention End Date
2019-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Intimate partner violence
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Based on the conflict tactics scale.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Empowerment; Income
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Randomized Field Experiment. See plan for datails.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
1000-1700 individuals
Sample size: planned number of observations
1000-1700
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
500-850 in each arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
0.18
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
Yes

Program Files

Program Files
Yes
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
We identify the effects of employment on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) by collaborating with 27 large companies in Ethiopia to randomly assign jobs to equally qualified female applicants. The job offers increase employment, total hours worked, income, earnings, and earnings shares within couples in the short and medium run but we find no effects on our main pre-registered outcome, physical IPV. In particular, we can reject relatively small positive increases of physical IPV. In the short run, job offers reduce emotional abuse by 26 percent.
Citation
Kotsadam, A., & Villanger, E. (2022). Jobs and intimate partner violence-evidence from a field experiment in ethiopia. Journal of Human Resources.

Reports & Other Materials