This paper studies the relationship between family income and domestic violence in a developing country. To do so, I focus on municipalities of Colombia with high levels of coffee production. Using negative shocks to coffee prices as an exogenous source of variation that impacts coffee-producing household income, I find that municipalities with more intensive coffee production experience an increase in domestic violence against women as a consequence of a negative income shock. In order to test the potential mechanisms, I estimate different heterogeneous effects that depict under which situations the shock intensifies. Using data at the individual level, I find analogous effects of a negative income shock for rural women who live in a municipality marked by intensive coffee production. Also, I find that a woman who has decision-making power within the household has a lower probability of being a victim of domestic violence when her household faced this type of shocks. This last result suggests that female empowerment is a mechanism to reduce violence targeted against women.
