Abstract
Before 2011, Chinese married couples expected equal-division of housing property upon divorce even when the home was titled only under the husband’s name and bought by the husband before marriage. In 2011, a Supreme Court decision led to enforcement of a title-based regime, only for housing property purchased before marriage and brought into the marriage by one of the spouses. We investigate the effects of this legal change using a difference-in-differences design. We find that this legal change weakened wives' intrahousehold bargaining power, leading to reductions in their leisure, increased consumption of male-favored goods, and reduced investment in children.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-38 |
Number of pages | 38 |
Journal | Journal of Human Resources |
Volume | 56 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2021 |
Keywords
- Household behavior
- Intergenerational investment
- Intrahousehold bargaining power
- Marital property law
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics and Econometrics
- Strategy and Management
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
- Management of Technology and Innovation