The effect of conditional cash transfers on reporting violence against women to the police in Mexico

Abstract
This paper examines the effect of Oportunidades, Mexico’s conditional cash tranfers program, on reporting violence against women to the police. I use specialized survey data to estimate the effect of additional reports to the police for poor women who experienced spousal abuse prior to participating in Oportunidades. The identification strategy for this paper consists of two instrumental variables that are based on institutional characteristics of Oportunidades: i) drop out variation caused by the type of hospital available in any given locality (e.g. federal versus state-run) and ii) the roll-out in the densification process. Findings indicate an increase of 30.2% in the reporting rates as a consequence of receiving Oportunidades. I propose several channels through which treatment might work into the final outcome: i) assimilation of women’s rights; ii) an increase of trust in the police; and iii) a new equilibrium in the marriage market in which more future dissolutions and fewer reconciliations occur among abused beneficiary women.