Empowering women? Inheritance rights, female education and dowry payments in India

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Roy, Sanchari
• 署名单位: University of Sussex
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.12.010
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 233-251
• 关键词: inheritance; Dowry payment; education; women; INDIA

摘要

This paper examines the impact of gender-progressive reforms to the inheritance law in India on women's outcomes. Despite stipulating that daughters would have equal shares as sons in ancestral property, I find that the reform failed to increase the actual likelihood of women inheriting property. Instead, parents appear to be gifting their share of land to their sons in order to circumvent the law. However, parents also appear to be compensating their daughters for such disinheritance by giving them alternative transfers in the form of either higher dowries or more education following the reform. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.