Women's Suffrage and Children's Education

Esra Kose, Elira Kuka and Na'ama Shenhav

No 24933, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: While a growing literature shows that women, relative to men, prefer greater investment in children, it is unclear whether empowering women produces better economic outcomes. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in U.S. suffrage laws, we show that exposure to suffrage during childhood led to large increases in educational attainment for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially blacks and Southern whites. We also find that suffrage led to higher earnings alongside education gains, although not for Southern blacks. Using newly-digitized data, we show that education increases are primarily explained by suffrage-induced growth in education spending, although early-life health improvements may have also contributed.

JEL-codes: I0 N30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-pol
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Published as Esra Kose & Elira Kuka & Na'ama Shenhav, 2021. "Women's Suffrage and Children's Education," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 374-405, August.

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