Demographic responses to a political transformation: Evidence of women’s empowerment from Nepal

Jayash Paudel and Pedro de Araujo

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2017, vol. 45, issue 2, 325-343

Abstract: During the 2006 Democratic Movement in Nepal, the parliament unanimously decided to strip the over two century-old Shah monarchy of absolute power. We study the short-run effects of the arrival of democracy on different measures of women’s empowerment by exploiting exogenous variation in the government through abolition of the monarchy. This paper employs a propensity score matching estimator to evaluate the linkage between change in political regime and opinions related to women’s empowerment from 2006 Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS). Results show that women’s say in decision making increased significantly, and opinions on violence against women strengthened. We further scrutinize the treatment effect estimates with Rosenbaum bounds and observe if they are sensitive to possible hidden selection bias. We also test for heterogeneity of the treatment effect across gender and find that males report higher probability of mutual household decision-making among couples than females.

Keywords: Monarchy; Women’S empowerment; Propensity score matching estimator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 D78 J19 O53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:45:y:2017:i:2:p:325-343

DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2016.07.003

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