Do legal reforms in favor of women improve their economic and political outcomes? Evidence from India

Many developing countries suffer from long-standing and large bias against women in social, economic and political spheres. The dissertation focuses on the case of India not only for its large gender gaps in key human development indicators but also for its great effort to address this social problem since its independence. The Amendment to the 1956 Hindu Succession Act grants daughters equal rights to inherit joint family property with sons. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment requires the village head's position to be reserved for women in one-third of villages. The dissertation consists of three essays that aim to assess the impacts of these two legal reforms.;Essay one examines whether and to what extent the Amendment to the 1956 Hindu Succession Act (HSAA) affects women's intergenerational transfers of physical and human capital. Our primary estimation strategy is the difference-in-difference estimator in which we compare the share of assets received by male and female siblings in the same household before and after the HSAA came into force. In the case of human capital investment, we compare the primary education attainment of the young cohorts who were young enough to potentially benefit from the reform to the old cohorts who were unlikely to benefit from the reform. In light of the fact that the amendment applies only to Hindus but not to Muslims, we compare the regression results between Hindus and Muslims for a robustness check. Results suggest that the amendment increased the share of total assets received by Hindu females who were single before the reform. They also point towards an increase in the share of gifts transferred to Hindu females who married after the amendment. In the meanwhile, Hindu girls who were in primary schools and who were going to enroll in primary schools after the amendment gained more years of primary education than boys relative to the old cohort.;Essay two explores the impacts of political quotas for women mandated by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment on public service delivery, political participation and female empowerment within the household. As reserved seats are randomly assigned across villages, OLS regressions of outcome variables on a reservation dummy will yield valid estimates. We do not find that reservation moved resources in a "pro-female" direction for improving public service delivery. However, such unexpected effects were weighed against significant and in most cases persistent impacts on outcomes such as meeting attendance and complaints to local authorities if problems associated with public service delivery were identified. Reservation in the current and in the previous period also increased the likelihood of women choosing the best form of birth control.;Essay three examines whether representation of women persists after political gender quotas introduced by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment lapse. We complement the relevant literature by using nationally-representative data reflecting population diversity to achieve a higher degree of external validity. Results show that reservation did not increase the likelihood of women winning open seats, and failed to encourage women to run for open seats. However, we note that, after exposed to reservation, villagers had a clear propensity to vote for candidates' qualifications rather than their social identities. Moreover, past reservation reduced the likelihood of women being influenced by their husbands in their voting decisions.