Compulsory education and gender gaps in intrahousehold empowerment

This paper estimates the effects of China’s 1986 Compulsory Education Law (CEL) on gender gaps in intrahousehold empowerment. The analysis uses a province-level dataset compiled from the population census and woman social status with a cohort difference-in-differences empirical strategy. This paper finds that the exposure to CEL had a positive impact on egalitarian intrahousehold decision making. It also increased the likelihood with which respondents reported perceiving egalitarian empowerment within the household. Additional evidence on mechanisms suggests that the results are due to exposure to CEL fostering earnings of female respondents and egalitarian gender attitudes of all respondents, as well as altering the family characteristics in terms of marriage age and husband’s schooling of female respondents.