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Education affects individual values and beliefs, mitigates prejudices and enhances open-mindedness. Additionally, education has been shown to affect cultural traits like trust and respect in societies. Building on this literature and employing an extensive individual-level cross country data from World Value Survey (WVS), we explore the role of educational attainment and cultural traits in shaping attitudes towards abortion. Our results show that higher educational attainment is associated with stronger justification of abortion as a choice. We also show that cultural traits like trust and respect enhance the association between educational attainment and attitudes towards abortion. Obedience, however, erodes the impact of educational attainment on the individual justification for abortion. Our results are robust to a wide array of controls as well as estimates taking into bias arising out of simultaneous sample selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2012, a young student was gang-raped on a bus in Delhi. Since then media attention has been directed toward raising awareness about crimes against women in India. But data shows that domestic violence and not rape is India’s number one reported crime over the last decade. An incidence of domestic violence, legally defined as “cruelty by husband or his relatives,” is reported once every five minutes. This paper attempts to prospectively examine the association between several risk factors and domestic violence in India. We utilize a comprehensive, national database, viz. the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) and focus on a sample of 69704 ever-married women between the ages of 15-49. A limited dependent variable model was used to estimate the effects. The dependent variable is a dichotomous variable indicating whether a respondent has faced any form of violence (both physical and emotional). Benchmark results and robustness checks indicate that several socio-economic and demographic factors are significantly associated with the likelihood of facing domestic violence. Factors that matter are educational attainment by the female as well as the husband, her employment status, the employment status of the husband, and demographic factors like caste and religion. A broad investigation indicates that among a comprehensive set of socio-economic and demographic variables that affect the susceptibility of ever-married women to domestic violence, women’s exposure to intergenerational violence, and alcohol consumption by the partner emerge as significant risk factors. The results remain robust even with choice of sub-samples based on educational differences between the partners. There is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that excessive alcohol consumption is a national problem. Policy options have varied between outright prohibition and the use of tax instruments to curb excessive alcohol consumption. Apart from these, other positive interventions could emphasize on adverse health impacts and children’s well-being to bring about a sustainable behavioral change in partners. In addition to empowering women to break the cycle of domestic violence, one possible policy solution calls for the use of medical settings as an intervention point for children exposed to such violence. In order to support practitioners, NGOs and governmental agencies could identify best practices and disseminate such information to communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a cross-national panel data, we investigate the combined effect of education attainment and a durable democratic system on the corruption levels of a nation. Higher levels of education foster a sense of ethical behavior and civic duty in the citizenry by raising awareness, which in turn, should reduce corruption. Decades-long tradition of democracy, on the other hand, increases government transparency and accountability as politicians have to seek reelection, and thus, stable democratic system should reduce political corruption. Our empirical results suggest that the combined effect of these variables reduces corruption significantly, and a durable democracy and education behave as complements in combating corruption. Additionally, our marginal estimates show that durability successfully enhances the effect of literacy in curbing corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the interactive association of press freedom, access to media and education with a nation's corruption levels. A free press generates unbiased information that greater access to the media helps propagate; and a greater degree of education, in the same context, helps individuals apply that information. This entire process generates a vigilant and corruption-free economy. It is therefore important to consider these factors in conjunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]