Women's Suffrage and Children's Education

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kose, Esra; Kuka, Elira; Shenhav, Na'ama
• 署名单位: Bucknell University; George Washington University; IZA Institute Labor Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research; Dartmouth College
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20180677
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 374-405
• 关键词: gender-differences; policy experiment; school; redistribution; CONSEQUENCES; leadership; selection; POLITICS; earnings; IMPACT

摘要

While a growing literature shows that women, relative to men, prefer greater investment in children, it is unclear whether empowering women produces better economic outcomes. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in US suffrage laws, we show that exposure to suffrage during childhood led to large increases in educational attainment for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially Blacks and Southern Whites. We also find that suffrage led to higher earnings alongside education gains, although not for Southern Blacks. Using newly digitized data, we show that education increases are primarily explained by suffrage-induced growth in education spending, although early-life health improvements may have also contributed.