Gendered Experience of Interpersonal Violence in Urban and Rural Spaces: The Case of Ghana

This paper exploits unique quantitative data from Ghana to investigate gendered experiences of inter-personal domestic and non-domestic violence in urban and rural areas. Urban areas are characterised by lower levels of domestic violence against women but higher levels of non-domestic violence against men than rural areas. We conduct Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition analyses to identify the sources of these differences. Urban areas reduce violence through higher welfare, education and employment outcomes, and lower alcohol consumption and polygamy prevalence than in rural areas. But more people living alone and wider insecurity in urban environments have the opposite effect on domestic and non-domestic violence.