Working Paper: NBER ID: w24933
Authors: Esra Kose; Elira Kuka; Naama Shenhav
Abstract: While a growing literature shows that women, relative to men, prefer greater investment in children, it is unclear whether empowering women produces better economic outcomes. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in U.S. suffrage laws, we show that exposure to suffrage during childhood led to large increases in educational attainment for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially blacks and Southern whites. We also find that suffrage led to higher earnings alongside education gains, although not for Southern blacks. Using newly-digitized data, we show that education increases are primarily explained by suffrage-induced growth in education spending, although early-life health improvements may have also contributed.
Keywords: Women's suffrage; Children's education; Human capital; Public spending
JEL Codes: I00; N30
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| suffrage exposure during childhood (I24) | educational attainment (I21) |
| suffrage exposure during childhood (I24) | higher earnings (J31) |
| suffrage (K16) | education spending (H52) |
| suffrage exposure during childhood (I24) | improvements in early-life health (I14) |
| education spending increase (H52) | educational attainment (I21) |