Inheritance Rights and Women's Empowerment in the Labor and Marriage Markets

Margaux Suteau (margaux.suteau@cyu.fr)
Additional contact information
Margaux Suteau: Université de Cergy-Pontoise, THEMA

No 2020-17, THEMA Working Papers from THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise

Abstract: There is increasing evidence that land rights are an e ective means of improving women's conditions. This paper exploits an exogenous change in the possibility of obtaining land rights for women in India and estimates its effects on women's empowerment. In particular, I use the 1976 to 1994 amendments to the Hindu Succession Act (HSA) in five states. I demonstrate that in these states, young women's education increased by approximately one year. I also find that the amendments did not a ect female labor force participation but did increase young women's age at marriage. I replicate this analysis using the 2005 national reform, and I obtain the same results. This finding shows that despite women's empowerment in the marriage market due to their increase in education, there are still many factors preventing them from increasing their labor supply. From a public policy perspective, this paper demonstrates that social norms governing marital behaviors can mitigate the effects of land rights.

Keywords: Hindu Succession Act; Education; Female labor force participation; Marriage market; India. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J12 J16 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://thema.u-cergy.fr/IMG/pdf/2020-17.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ema:worpap:2020-17

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in THEMA Working Papers from THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stefania Marcassa (stefania.marcassa@u-cergy.fr this e-mail address is bad, please contact repec@repec.org).