Gender Inequality and Economic Development: Evidence from Property Rights Reforms in India

Abstract

This paper examines the causal relationship between women's property rights and economic development using staggered adoption of inheritance reforms across Indian states (1976-2005) as natural experiments. Exploiting within-state variation in reform timing and intensity, we find that equalizing daughters' inheritance rights increased women's educational attainment by 0.9 years, reduced child marriage by 26%, increased female labor force participation by 7.2 percentage points, and accelerated district-level GDP growth by 0.8% annually. The reforms generated these effects through increased bargaining power, human capital investment, entrepreneurship, and productivity gains. Our estimates suggest that eliminating gender gaps in property rights could increase Indian GDP by 12-18%, representing $420-630 billion in annual output.