46/2011 Sanchari Roy

This paper examines the impact of women's property inheritance rights on their education. Using exogenous variation created by state level reforms to the inheritance law in India, I find that mean educational attainment of women who were of primary school-going age at the time of reform increased by 0.5 years in reforming relative to non-reforming states. The impact is present only for women in landowning and "Hindu" households, with no concomitant impact on men. I also provide suggestive evidence on the underlying mechanism that in order to prevent fragmentation of household property, parents compensate daughters by investing in their education.

Culture and Development

Journal of Development Economics

http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.12.010