Women's inheritance rights reform and the preference for sons in India

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bhalotra, Sonia; Brule, Rachel; Roy, Sanchari
• 署名单位: University of Essex; New York University; New York University Abu Dhabi; University of London; King's College London
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2018.08.001
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: Inheritance rights; ultrasound; Female foeticide; sex-selection; son preference; GENDER; INDIA

摘要

We investigate whether legislation of equal inheritance rights for women modifies the historic preference for sons in India, and find that it exacerbates it. Children born after the reform in families with a firstborn daughter are 3.8-4.3 percentage points less likely to be girls, indicating that the reform encouraged female foeticide. We also find that the reform increased excess female infant mortality and son-biased fertility stopping. This suggests that the inheritance reform raised the costs of having daughters, consistent with which we document an increase in stated son preference in fertility post reform. We conclude that this is a case where legal reform was frustrated by persistence of cultural norms. We provide some suggestive evidence of slowly changing patrilocality norms.