Mothers often work more in violent households, but
their children fare relatively poorly. We consider a resource extraction
motive which can explain observed relationships between female
labour supply, household public goods provisions, and violence in the
household. We first show that children in Latin America are more
likely to die, and sometimes have worse height-for-age scores in violent
households, after conditioning on observable parental characteristics.
The 1971 census microdata from Nicaragua is then combined with the
Demographic and Health Survey and Living Standards Measurement
Study for 1998, to show that there is a positive impact of female employment
on violence. A 10% rise in women’s employment propensities
is associated with an increase in violence of about 1-4%.