Community Economic Status and Physical and Sexual Intimate Partner Violence against Women in Bangladesh: Compositional or Contextual Effects?

Kristin VanderEnde, Emory University
Lynn Sibley, Emory University
Yuk Fai Cheong, Emory University
Kathryn M. Yount, Emory University

In this research, we used a multi-level contextual effects analysis to disentangle the household- and community-level associations between income and physical and sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) against women. This analysis was based on interviews from a probability sample of 2702 ever-married women living in 42 rural villages and 39 urban moholla surveyed in the Bangladesh subset of the World Health Organization’s Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence Against Women. Our analyses showed that higher household income was negatively associated with women’s risk of experiencing physical or sexual IPV. Controlling for residence in a low-income household, living in a low-income community was not associated with the risk of experiencing IPV. These results support a household-, not community-level, relationship between income and IPV. Future research on communities and IPV in Bangladesh should focus on community characteristics, apart from community income, to explain community-level variation in IPV against women.