Intergenerational Effects of Improving Women's Property Rights : Evidence from India

This paper analyzes the intergenerational effects following the positive changes in women's inheritance rights in India. Using the Indian Human Development Survey data for rural India and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the property rights reform significantly increased women's education. However, we find no evidence of an intergenerational transmission of education to her children. We explore two potential mechanisms to explain these results: the role of status conflict among spouses and that of a child's birth-order and gender. Given that a woman's bargaining power may depend on her relative position to that of her husband's, we investigate this channel and find a significant decrease in her sons' education in households where fathers are less educated than mothers. Accounting for the child's birth-order and gender, we find no evidence of son preference through the education channel but we find suggestive evidence of older son preference in treated households