Resource information
This paper examines whether and to what
extent amendments in inheritance legislation impact
women's physical and human capital investments, using
disaggregated household level data from India. The authors
use inheritance patterns over three generations of
individuals to assess the impact of changes in the Hindu
Succession Act that grant daughters equal coparcenary birth
rights in joint family property that were denied to
daughters in the past. The causal effect is isolated by
exploiting the variation in the timing of father's
death to compare within household bequests of land given to
sons and daughters in the states of Maharashtra and
Karnataka. The analysis shows that the amendment
significantly increased daughters' likelihood to
inherit land, but that even after the amendment substantial
bias persists. The results also indicate a robust increase
in educational attainment of daughters, suggesting an
alternative channel of wealth transfer.
