TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bhalotra, Sonia R.
AU  - Brulé, Rachel
AU  - Roy, Sanchari
        TI  - Women's Inheritance Rights Reform and the Preference for Sons in India
        PY  - 2017/Dec/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 11239
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp11239
        AB  - We investigate whether legislation of equal inheritance rights for women modifies the historic preference for sons in India, and find that it exacerbates it. Children born after the reform in families with a first-born daughter are 3.8–4.3 percentage points less likely to be girls, indicating that the reform encouraged female foeticide. We also find that the reform increased excess female infant mortality and son-biased fertility stopping. This suggests that the inheritance reform raised the costs of having daughters, consistent with which we document an increase in stated son preference in fertility post-reform. We conclude that this is a case where legal reform was frustrated by persistence of cultural norms. We provide some suggestive evidence of slowly changing patrilocality norms.
        KW  - son preference
KW  - ultrasound
KW  - inheritance rights
KW  - female foeticide
KW  - sex selection
KW  - gender
KW  - India
        ER  -