Table of Contents

Author: Pankaj Chowdhury, Komal Gupta


Abstract

Physical, sexual, or psychological abuse inflicted by a partner, irrespective of their marital status, is known as intimate partner violence (IPV). According to previous research, child marriage puts young women at higher risk for intimate partner violence (IPV), which has been related to several unfavourable consequences for their physical and mental health. The fifth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data has been used in this study (2019–2021). The final sample size for analysis stood at 59,134. To decompose the gap in IPV between these two groups, the Fairlie decomposition technique is used to decompose the difference in predicted odds into compositional and structural effects. This will provide insights into the relative importance of each risk factor in explaining the difference in IPV prevalence between early and non-early married women. The intimate partner violence (IPV) prevalence rates differ between early and non-early married women, with a prevalence of 36.63% among those who marry before the age of 18 and a prevalence of 27.27% among those who marry at 18 years of age or older. Indian married women who marry at 18 or older have 0.94 times the odds of experiencing IPV compared to those married younger than 18. The analysis revealed that approximately 84% of this gap could be explained by various predictors included in this study, with group disparities in marital control, wealth index, husband’s alcohol consumption, wife’s education in years, and total children ever born accounting for about 75% of the difference in IPV prevalence. By shedding light on these significant contributors, this study emphasizes the importance of addressing child marriage and implementing protective measures to combat IPV within early marriages effectively.

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Keywords: intimate partner violence in india, intimate partner violence statistics, effects of intimate partner violence in india, early marriage in india, decomposition analysis


References

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