Introduction:
India is one of the developing world’s numerous countries where gender inequality is pervasive. Inequitable access to school for women, poor health and nutritional results, lack of involvement in the labor market, and financial exclusion are some of the most prominent examples of gender inequality (Kabeer[1]). According to Roy[2] and Esquivel, women’s empowerment is critical for developing regions due to its significant implications for efficiency as well as equity. “Women and girls must enjoy equal access to quality education, economic resources, and political participation as well as equal opportunities with men and boys for employment, leadership, and decision-making at all levels,” the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 further states (UN Women[3]). Three main aspects are thought to have an impact on women’s economic roles: social institutions, women’s access to resources, and overall development level (Morrison & Jutting). The historical absence of legal inheritance rights for daughters is one factor contributing to persistent gender inequality and the economic disadvantage of women. Land markets are underdeveloped in poorer nations, and most land acquisitions are through inheritance. Due to unequal inheritance rights, women remain asset poor and economically dependent on men even in land-owning families in emerging nations (Kabeer).
Therefore, women’s access to property through land rights is a key factor in more equitable gendered patterns of income distribution, household bargaining power, and marital decision-making (Deininger, Songqing, Nagaranjan, & Xia). In this regard, the World Bank has argued that the most promising legislative initiatives to strengthen the position of women in society are those that attempt to ensure equal inheritance rights over property. The acquisition of assets through inheritance has an impact on women’s reproductive choices (Jayachandran ), marriage market outcomes (Kudo, 2015), agency in intrahousehold decision-making (Anderson & Eswaran, 2009), social mobility (Agarwal, 2003; Anderson & Binder, 2015), and human capital investment in health and education (Harari, 2019). Inheritance laws have the potential to bring about “magnetic effects” in terms of equitable social custom transformation in these places (Aldashev, Chaara, Platteau, & Wahhaj, Citation 2012). Many developing nations have changed their inheritance rules recently in an effort to increase gender parity in the distribution of inheritances. Various contexts have examined the effects of modifications to inheritance rules on women’s empowerment. For example, Harari discovered that changes to Kenya’s inheritance rules had significant human capital benefits, such as lowering the rate of gender mutation, increasing access to medical care during childbirth, and postponing marriage and childbearing until later in life. Menon, van der Meulen Roders, and Nguyen showed in another study that household resources were more heavily allocated to health, education, and nutrition rather than to economic “bads” like alcohol and tobacco after the Vietnam Land Law (1993) was passed, which favored women’s land rights.
India changed the Hindu Succession Act (HSA) of 1956 in 2005 after realizing the transformative power of women’s inheritance rights. This gave women the legal right to inherit the property left by their parents. The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 is the name given to this constitutional amendment (HSAA)[4]. Nowadays, the law mandates that parents distribute their ancestral property equally to each of their children. Daughters may file a lawsuit if they are not given an equal portion of their parents’ assets. Studies already conducted have demonstrated that although this law has raised the possibility of land inheritance for women, property rights for men and women are still unequal in many regions of India (Goyal, Deininger, & Nagarajan)[5]. Rather, parents are making more educational investments and dowry payments to make up for their daughters’ disinheritance (Roy; Sapkal). However, there is a paucity of empirical data and inconsistent results about this reform’s effects across generations.
Conceptualizing women’s inheritance rights
Wealth bequests from parents are the main way assets are passed down through the generations. These impact linked to economic advantages as well as capital accumulation patterns (Stiglitz & Weiss)[6]. Conventional wealth transfer models (Becker; Becker & Tomes[7]analyze the nature of intergenerational bequests by treating families as a single unit where all resources are pooled. It is assumed that the head of the household is a selfless planner who would allocate their finances to maximize their current spending as well as the future earnings of their offspring. Several studies, however, have criticized these unitary, gender-neutral models of economic prosperity because they fail to account for the variation in household choices and the bargaining power of women (Agarwal, 1995; Anderson & Eswaran, 2009)[8]. It has been shown that a mother’s control over her family’s finances improves household food security, increases the chances that a girl child will survive, and increases educational investment in developing nations (Duflo, Citation2003; Duflo &Udry; Luke & Munshi, Citation2011; Qian).
According to Harari, there are two potential outcomes from changing inheritance rules to be more gender-fair. The ability of a woman to inherit property is likely to provide her with more negotiating power within her home. This in turn influences the decisions made by the household regarding the investment in women’s human capital. It’s unclear how much each household should invest in women’s human capital in light of these changes in inheritance law. It mostly relies on whether physical capital (ancestral property) and human capital (health, education, and nutrition) are treated as complements or replacements. More equitable inheritance rules will also benefit women’s socio-health when physical and human capital are viewed as complementary.Several research, including Roy and Goyal et al. (Citation2013), have provided empirical evidence for this. Nevertheless, other research has shown that the adoption of inheritance laws has negatively impacted women’s human capital accumulation in terms of their involvement in the labor market, health, and education (Ambrus, Field, & Torero; Rosenblum). Therefore, there is still a great deal of uncertainty regarding the potential effects of these gender-neutral inheritance rules.
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