Women’s Inheritance Rights Reforms and Impact on Women Empowerment: Evidence from India

Minali Grover, Indian Institute of Management Indore
Ajay Sharma, Indian Institute of Management (IIM)

This paper explores the influence of inheritance rights on women’ empowerment in India. Using the quasi-natural experiment framework wherein, five states amended the Hindu Succession Amendment Act (HSA) from 1976 to 1994 before it was federally amended in 2005. We employ difference-in-difference (DID) strategy and consider triangulation approach to identify women empowerment indicators namely: access to resources (household autonomy and marriage choice), agency (physical and civil autonomy), and outcomes (economic autonomy and intimate partner violence) to measure varying dimensions of empowerment. Using the India Human Development Survey (IHDS-I) 2004–05, our results indicate a positive impact on marriage choice, intimate partner violence, physical, and civil autonomy. However, negative impact on household autonomy and no significant on economic participation for women exposed to state amendments. Further, exploring the heterogeneities in terms of socio-economic status, the analysis highlights that upper-quartile households experience a greater negative impact on household autonomy. Overall, this study highlights that the impact of inheritance law is not unfirm across different groups, as there is heterogeneity in terms of location (urban and rural), socio-economic status, level of patriarchy in a state, and gender of the head of household.

Keywords: Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination, Comparative methods

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