Women's Suffrage and Children's Education / Esra Kose, Elira Kuka, Na'ama Shenhav.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kose, Esra.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Kuka, Elira.

Shenhav, Na'ama.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w24933.

NBER working paper series no. w24933

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2018.