Publication:
Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (241.17 KB)
468 downloads
Date
2019-06
ISSN
1564-698X
Published
2019-06
Abstract
This paper examines whether economic empowerment of women improves their autonomy within their marital household, and investigates the mechanism, by exploiting variation from a legal reform aimed at improving women’s inheritance rights in India. Results suggest that the reform increased women’s participation in decision-making but at the expense of the older generation of household members and not at the expense of their husbands. Two channels are proposed to explain this phenomenon. First, this can be driven by a shift in the family structure from traditional joint families to nuclear households. Such a change is consistent both with the increase in women’s decision-making authority, which they can exert to move out of the joint household, as well as with men’s incentives, since men have weaker financial links with their parents post-reform. Second, even within joint families, the amendments empowered young couples at the expense of the older generation of household members.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Mookerjee, Sulagna. 2019. Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India. World Bank Economic Review. © Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34875 License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO.
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal
World Bank Economic Review
1564-698X
Journal Volume
Collections
Associated URLs
Associated content
Citations