Women's inheritance rights reforms and impact on women's empowerment: evidence from India

This paper explores the influence of inheritance rights on women's empowerment in India. We employ the quasi-natural experiment framework wherein five states amended the Hindu Succession Act (HSA) from 1976 to 1994 before it was federally amended in 2005. We adopt a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy alongside a triangulation approach to pinpoint indicators of women's empowerment. These indicators include access to resources, agency, and outcomes, which collectively measure various dimensions of empowerment. Using the India Human Development Survey 2004-05 (IHDS-I), our results indicate a positive impact of HSA amendments on economic participation, attitude towards intimate partner violence, physical, and civil autonomy. However, there is a negative impact of this change in law on household autonomy and no significant impact on marriage choice for women exposed to state amendments. Further, we explore the heterogeneities in findings regarding socio-economic status, location, level of patriarchy in a state, and gender of the head of the household. Overall, the study highlights that the impact of inheritance law is not uniform across different groups.