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

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 part...

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Main Author:	Mookerjee, Sulagna
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2020
Subjects:	FAMILY STRUCTURE INHERITANCE LAW INTRAHOUSEHOLD BARGAINING GENDER
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34875

id	okr-10986-34875
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-348752021-04-23T14:02:10Z Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India Mookerjee, Sulagna FAMILY STRUCTURE INHERITANCE LAW INTRAHOUSEHOLD BARGAINING GENDER 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. 2020-12-04T20:02:30Z 2020-12-04T20:02:30Z 2019-06 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34875 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research South Asia India
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	FAMILY STRUCTURE INHERITANCE LAW INTRAHOUSEHOLD BARGAINING GENDER
spellingShingle	FAMILY STRUCTURE INHERITANCE LAW INTRAHOUSEHOLD BARGAINING GENDER Mookerjee, Sulagna Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India
geographic_facet	South Asia India
description	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.
format	Journal Article
author	Mookerjee, Sulagna
author_facet	Mookerjee, Sulagna
author_sort	Mookerjee, Sulagna
title	Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India
title_short	Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India
title_full	Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India
title_fullStr	Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India
title_full_unstemmed	Gender-Neutral Inheritance Laws, Family Structure, and Women’s Status in India
title_sort	gender-neutral inheritance laws, family structure, and women’s status in india
publisher	Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2020
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34875
_version_	1764481852139110400

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

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