Intergenerational Effects of Improving Women's Property Rights: Evidence from India By Nayana Bose Shreyasee Das Working Paper 17 - 01 University of Wisconsin – Whitewater Department of Economics 4304 Hyland Hall 800 W. Main Street Whitewater, WI 53538 Tel: (262) 472 -1361 Intergenerational Effects of Improving Women’s Property Rights: Evidence from India Nayana Bose∗ Shreyasee Dasy This Version: November 14, 2017 First Version: November 6, 2014 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 inheri- tance 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 Keywords: Property Rights, Hindu Inheritance Law, Education, Intergenerational Trans- fers, India ∗Department of Economics, Scripps College, Claremont, CA 91711, Email:
[email protected] yDepartment of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI - 53190, Email:
[email protected].