Entitled to Property: Inheritance Laws, Female Bargaining Power, and Child Health in India

Child height is a significant predictor of human capital and economic status throughout adulthood. Moreover, non-unitary household models of family behavior posit that increasing women's bargaining power can influence child health. We study the effects of an inheritance law change, the Hindu Su...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc
Main Authors Hossain, Md Shahadath, Nikolov, Plamen
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 01.01.2021
Subjects
Bargaining
Children & youth
Childrens health
Families & family life
Human capital
Power
Women
India
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Summary:Child height is a significant predictor of human capital and economic status throughout adulthood. Moreover, non-unitary household models of family behavior posit that increasing women's bargaining power can influence child health. We study the effects of an inheritance law change, the Hindu Succession Act Amendment (HSAA), which conferred enhanced inheritance rights to unmarried women in India, on child health. We find robust evidence that the HSAA improved the height and weight of children. In addition, we find evidence consistent with a channel that the policy improved the women's intrahousehold bargaining power, leading to downstream benefits: improved parental investments for children. These study findings are also compatible with the notion that children do better when their mothers control a more significant fraction of the family resources. Therefore, policies that empower women can have additional positive spillovers for children's human capital.