Working Paper: NBER ID: w13919
Authors: Matthias Doepke; Michèle Tertilt
Abstract: The nineteenth century witnessed dramatic improvements in the legal rights of married women. Given that these changes took place long before women gained the right to vote, they amounted to a voluntary renouncement of power by men. In this paper, we investigate men's incentives for sharing power with women. In our model, women's legal rights set the marital bargaining power of husbands and wives. We show that men face a tradeoff between the rights they want for their own wives (namely none) and the rights of other women in the economy. Men prefer other men's wives to have rights because men care about their own daughters and because an expansion of women's rights increases educational investments in children. We show that men may agree to relinquish some of their power once technological change increases the importance of human capital. We corroborate our argument with historical evidence on the expansion of women's rights in England and the United States.
Keywords: women's rights; human capital; family dynamics; economic development; gender equality
JEL Codes: D13; E13; J16; N30; O43
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Improvements in women's legal rights (K38) | Increased bargaining power within households (D13) |
| Increased bargaining power within households (D13) | Affects men's decisions regarding support for women's rights (J16) |
| Men's preferences influenced by altruism towards daughters (D64) | Improvements in women's rights (J16) |
| Improvements in women's rights (J16) | Increased investments in children's human capital (J24) |
| Technological change increases importance of human capital (J24) | Men incentivized to relinquish power and support women's rights (J16) |
| Number of daughters (J12) | Influences men's political preferences regarding women's rights (J16) |