Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Economic empowerment and intimate partner violence: a secondary data
analysis of the cross-sectional Demographic Health Surveys in Sub-Saharan
Africa
Version: 
1 
Date: 
14 Feb 2021
Reviewer's report:
The authors address an important topic in global women's health using a robust
and unique dataset. Current research on the connections between IPV and
economic empowerment is mixed and this study adds relevant empirical findings
and furthers the field. 
The background clearly explains the motivation for the study and the theoretical
foundation. 
Regarding the methods, I agree with the authors that the cross-sectional, multi-
year, multi-country, dataset is appropriately used. However, I would like to see
the logistical regressions re-run using country fixed effects. Given the
differences in prevalence reports across countries, it is important to control for
any country-specific effects. I actually doubt that the relationships of interest will
change. However, adding fixed effects will greatly strengthen the results,
allowing the authors to say that the relationships identified hold true regardless
of country. I'd very much like to see year fixed effects also, but methodologically
I am not sure what to suggest as some of the surveys span two years. Perhaps the
authors can provide some additional justification that there was no huge event
during this 15 year time period that would have impacted IPV or its relationship
with household economic measures, eg, no large intervention (such as an
increase in shelters) or new country initiative (such as a public education
campaign on IPV awareness).
I enjoyed reading the manuscript, and commend the authors for their important
work. Their detailed responses to reviewer 1 were clear and helped me with my
review. I am glad they were included.
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