Long-term Effects of Historical Inheritance Customs on Household Formation and Gender Disparities
This paper studies the effect of inheritance customs for agricultural land on household formation and gender disparities. Under partible inheritance, agricultural land is split equally among all siblings. Under impartible inheritance, only one descendant inherits the entire land. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, I find that partible inheritance has a persistent negative effect on household size but not fertility. It has a positive impact on today’s female political representation and a negative effect on the gender gap in employment. Fathers also have a lower probability of making use of parental leave benefits but receive them for a longer time.