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Environmental factors

Heat Exposure and Risk of Violence During Pregnancy

Presenting Author
Jorden Jackson
Oxford University
Submitting Author
Jorden Jackson
Additional Authors
Ursula Gazeley

Abstract

Emerging evidence links extreme heat exposure to increased interpersonal violence, yet little is known about how climate-related stressors affect violence during pregnancy—a period with profound consequences for maternal and child health. This study examines whether exposure to high ambient temperatures increases the risk of experiencing physical violence during pregnancy across low- and middle-income countries. We leverage all Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Phase 8 that include the domestic violence module, pregnancy index, and geocoded cluster coordinates, resulting in a final sample from 28 countries. Our outcome is women’s self-reported experience of physical abuse during pregnancy. To address a key limitation of the DHS measure—namely, that it does not identify which pregnancy the violence occurred in—we restrict the analytic sample to women with exactly one lifetime pregnancy. This restriction allows us to align reported violence with a single identifiable pregnancy episode. We merge DHS cluster-level geocodes with high-resolution gridded temperature data from CRU TS to construct measures of heat exposure relative to historical local temperatures during the estimated pregnancy window. We estimate logistic regression models with first-subnational spatial unit and conception year fixed effects, controlling for education, marital status, urban residence, age, and relationship to household head. We hypothesize that higher exposure to extreme heat during pregnancy increases the probability of experiencing physical violence, potentially through economic stress, reduced labor productivity, and heat-induced aggression. We further examine heterogeneity by socioeconomic disadvantage, anticipating disproportionate effects among more vulnerable women. As temperatures rise globally, climate-driven increases in violence during pregnancy may compound risks for both maternal and infant health.