Access to Justice, Gender Violence and Children: Evidence from Women's Justice Centers in Peru∗ Iva Trakoy Maria Micaela Sviatschiz Guadalupe Kavanaughx March 18, 2018 Abstract Many developing countries have unequal access to justice, especially for women. What are the implications for gender-based violence, intra-household bargaining and investments in children? This paper provides quasi-experimental evidence on women's justice centers (WJCs) a community based approach aimed at reducing violence against women in Peru. Using administrative data from health providers and district attorney offices, we examine the slow rollout of these centers and find a reduction in domestic violence, female injuries due to aggression, femicides and mental health problems. Moreover, we find that the WJCs sub- stantially increase human capital investments in children, increasing enrollment, attendance, test scores, while decreasing child labor. These results are consistent with a bargaining model in which the threat point is determined by access to justice. In sum, the evidence in this paper implies that providing access to justice for women is not only important for addressing gender-based violence, but also generates intergenerational benefits. JEL Classification: J12, J16, I25, K38 Keywords: gender-based violence, access to justice, children, household bargaining ∗We are very grateful for the abundance of support, guidance, and helpful comments from Karen Macours. We also gratefully acknowledge all the helpful comments and suggestions from Oliver Vanden Eynde, Gustavo Bobonis, John Giles, Martin Ravallion, Dominique van de Walle, Denis Cogneau, Sylvie Lambert, Zach Brown, Suresh Naidu, Cristian Pop-Eleches, Miguel Urquiola, Bentley MacLeod, Jonas Hjort, Fabiola Alba and Maria Fernanda Rosales and all the participants of the Development Seminar at Paris School of Economics. We are responsible for all remaining errors. yParis School of Economics and World Bank, [email protected] zPrinceton University, Department of Economics, [email protected] xRutgers University, [email protected] 1 Introduction An accessible and fair justice system is thought to be important for economic development, so much so that it was recently added as a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal. However, in developing countries, the high rates of under-reporting for gender-based violence and low convictions rates for crimes against women implies unequal access to the law, particularly for women. In particular, women are often unable to seek justice for domestic violence or receive equitable treatment during a divorce (Duflo, 2012; Revilla, 1999). Evidence from India finds that only 3% of women have ever had contact with the police, despite the fact that violence is quite high (Banerjee et al., 2012). This may have to do with the fact that women do not trust formal institutions enough to report violence. In some countries, the police regularly ignore domestic violence complaints, saying that \domestic disputes" are not a police matter (e.g. Jubb et al., 2010; Boesten, 2012).1 At the same time, gender-based violence remains a worldwide social problem, affecting 30% of women each year (WHO, 2013).2 Research and policy in this area has mainly focused on ad- dressing these issues through economically empowering women, but in some cases this can actu- ally increase gender-based violence (e.g. Bobonis, Gonz´alez-Brenes and Castro, 2013; Angelucci, 2008; Aizer, 2010). There is little evidence on the role of state capacity to deter gender-based violence by improving access to justice. This is of critical importance given the paradoxical finding that better economic conditions can lead to a backlash effects, increasing conflict over household resources. A potential, and previously unconsidered, explanation for this is the fact that deterrence of crimes committed against women may be perceived to be low, allowing per- petrators to threaten violence without repercussions. In other words, when civic participation and access to justice for women are low, women cannot rely on the justice system as a credible threat to prevent violence. In this paper, we examine whether improving access to justice for women reduces gender- based violence and consequently improves children's outcomes in Peru. First, we study how women's access to justice affects the incidence of gender-based violence as measured by self- reported domestic violence. We also use administrative data from hospitals and district attorneys to examine the effect on femicides, female injuries due to aggression, and mental health. Second, we examine the intergenerational effects, focusing on investments in children's human capital. This provides insight into whether household investments in children become more aligned with women's preferences when violence against women declines. In particular, whether these effects 1Furthermore, in cases of family violence in rural Peruvian communities, women are often assumed to have a certain level of blame in a conflict (Revilla, 1999). Traditional methods of justice based on local customs also are often discriminatory towards women and rarely impartial (Franco and Gonz´alez, 2009). 2Women who suffer from abusive in the household are more likely to report physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health problems (Campbell, 2002). Domestic violence may also limit their ability to take care of children. A growing literature on domestic violence finds that childhood exposure to domestic violence is associated with a number of emotional and behavioral problems (e.g. Pollak, 2004; Carlson, 2000; Huth-Bocks, Levendosky and Semel, 2001; Koenen et al., 2003; Carrell and Hoekstra, 2010). 1 are consistent with a bargaining model in which the threat point is determined by access to justice. To isolate causal channels, we exploit the gradual rollout of women's justice centers (WJC) across Peru during the period 2006-2014. The WJC centers are specialized institutions whose main purpose is to reduce gender-based violence by providing legal and psychological support. Violence against women is particularly important in Peru where the rate of intimate partner violence has been among the highest in the world, consistent with the fact that women in Peru have little bargaining power (e.g. Garcia-Moreno et al., 2006; Bott et al., 2012). As a response to this endemic problem in the country, the Peruvian Ministry for Women and Vulnerable Populations decided to create the WJC in 1999 as part of the National Program against Sexual and Family Violence. During the period of analysis, the number of WJC centers has grown from 13 in the first year to 226 by the end of 2014, covering 100% of the 24 regions of Peru and 96% of the provinces. Even though WJC centers are one such intervention that has been gaining popularity in developing countries, little attention has been paid to the actual effectiveness of such centers. Given this setting, we use a difference-in-differences strategy which exploits variation cre- ated by the differential timing in the opening of the WJC centers and spatial variation in the exposure of a school/household to a WJC center, together with province-by-year fixed effects. We geo-match schools and households with detailed data on WJC's locations and founding years in order to construct two different measures of exposure to the WJC center: presence of WJC center within 1 kilometer from the household/school and presence of a WJC center in house- hold's/school's district. This empirical strategy allows us to compare changes in outcomes of households, including women and their children, and schools already residing in the proximity of a WJC center (\treatment households/schools") to those not yet reached by the program (\control households/schools"). To observe these sources of variation, we build a detailed panel using multiple geo-coded datasets: individual and household-level data, school level data and administrative data on WJC centers, femicides, female mortality due to aggression and female hospitalizations for mental health problems which allow us to analyze the effects at a very disaggregated level. First, our individual and household-level data comes from the Peruvian Demographic Health Survey (DHS), which is a nationally representative cross-sectional survey that contains rich information on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the household members, as well as a detailed domestic violence module for married or cohabiting women. The Peruvian DHS covers the period 2000-2014 and is geo-coded at the cluster level. Second, our school level data comes from the Peruvian School Census, which is a large geo-coded panel dataset on primary and secondary school enrollment that covers the universe of schools in Peru during the period 1998 to 2014. Third, the administrative data on WJC centers comes from the Peruvian Ministry for Women and Vulnerable Populations (MIMP) and consists of a geo-coded directory 2 of WJC centers and their founding dates across all over Peru from 1999 till 2014. Data on femicides at the district level comes from the Peruvian Crime Observatory at the Ministry of Public Affairs. Finally, data on female deaths due to aggression and female hospitalizations for mental health problems at the district level come from hospital records obtained from the Peruvian Ministry of Health. Our first finding is that improving access to justice for women reduces self-reported domestic violence, femicides, female deaths due to aggression and improves mental and physical health. In particular, we find that after the opening women who reside in the proximity of a WJC center are significantly less likely to suffer from physical and emotional violence by their spouse. At the same time, the presence of a WJC center in the district is associated with 2-7% reduction in the number of femicides and female deaths due to aggression. Moreover, we find evidence that mental health hospitalizations decline by 20%. Finally, we also find some evidence that after the WJC opened, women are more likely to utilize formal institutions in cases of violence, suggesting an increase in trust in state institution.