Customary Norms, Inheritance, and Human Capital

• Tác giả: Eliana La Ferrera
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 233.3 Humankind
• Thông tin xuất bản: American Economic Association, 2017
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 302972
• Chủ đề: 1. CULTURAL NORMS; 2. EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT; 3. LAND ALLOCATION; 4. LAND INHERITANCE; 5. PROPERTY RIGHTS

Tóm tắt

We study the role of traditional norms in land allocation and human capital investment. We exploit a policy experiment in Ghana that increased the land that children from matrilineal groups could inherit from their fathers. Boys exposed to the reform received 0.9 less years of education-an effect driven by landed households, for whom the reform was binding. We find no effect for girls, whose inheritance was de facto unaffected. These patterns suggest that before the reform matrilineal groups invested more in education than they would if unconstrained, to substitute for land inheritance, underscoring the importance of cultural norms.