Intergenerational Effects of Improving Women's Property Rights: Evidence from India

Shreyasee Das and Nayana Bose

2017 Papers from Job Market Papers

Abstract: This paper analyzes the intergenerational effects following the positive changes in women's inheritance rights. The amendment to the Hindu Succession Act, the law governing inheritance for Hindus, empowered unmarried daughters at the time of the reform to have equal rights to inherit ancestral property as their brothers. We employ a difference-in-differences strategy and exploit the state level variation in a woman's exposure to the reform. Using the Indian Human Development Survey data for rural India, we find that the property rights reform significantly increased women's education. We find a significant decrease in her sons' education, the effect is magnified in households where fathers are less educated than mothers. We further explore the role of birth order and the gender composition of children to assess the intergenerational impact of this more gender equal inheritance law. Regardless of the child's gender, our results show a significant decrease in educational attainment for younger children.

JEL-codes: D13 I25 J16 K36 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-12-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu and nep-gen
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Related works:
Journal Article: Intergenerational effects of improving women’s property rights: evidence from India (2021)
Working Paper: Intergenerational Effects of Improving Women's Property Rights: Evidence from India (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jmp:jm2017:pda789

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