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This article attempts to document and account for the long-run evolution of inheritance. We find that in a country like France the annual flow of inheritance was about 20—25% of national income between 1820 and 1910, down to less than 5% in 1950, and back up to about 15% by 2010. A simple theoretical model of wealth accumulation, growth, and inheritance can fully account for the observed U-shaped pattern and levels. Using this model, we find that under plausible assumptions the annual bequest flow might reach about 20—25% of national income by 2050. This corresponds to a capitalized bequest share in total wealth accumulation well above 100%. Our findings illustrate the fact that when the growth rate g is small, and when the rate of return to private wealth r is permanently and substantially larger than the growth rate (say, r = 4—5% versus g = 1—2%), which was the case in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century and is likely to happen again in the twenty-first century, then past wealth and inheritance are bound to play a key role for aggregate wealth accumulation and the structure of lifetime inequality. Contrary to a widespread view, modern economic growth did not kill inheritance.

We study the role of traditional norms in land allocation and human capital investment. We exploit a policy experiment in Ghana that increased the land that children from matrilineal groups could inherit from their fathers. Boys exposed to the reform received 0.9 less years of education—an effect driven by landed households, for whom the reform was binding. We find no effect for girls, whose inheritance was de facto unaffected. These patterns suggest that before the reform matrilineal groups invested more in education than they would if unconstrained, to substitute for land inheritance, underscoring the importance of cultural norms.

This paper investigates the human capital effects of a legal reform granting Kenyan women equal inheritance rights. I employ a difference-in-differences strategy, exploiting variation in prereform inheritance rights across religious groups. I find that women exposed to the reform are more educated, less likely to undergo genital mutilation, and more likely to receive prenatal care and that they delay marriage and childbearing. They also tend to participate more in family decisions, suggesting improved bargaining power as the main channel. These findings suggest that legal recognition of women’s inheritance rights can be beneficial for women even in the context of poor enforcement.

We study the effects of a series of state and federal reforms that granted Indian women equal inheritance rights on the quantity and quality of children. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we find that women who were affected by the state reforms had 0.4 more children. State reforms did not have any effect on children’s heights. To assess the impact of the federal reform, we use panel data on women and a novel treatment based on the timing of their fathers’ deaths. We find that women affected by the reform had on average 0.22 fewer children and had taller children on average. While the federal reform had no effect on the number of daughters born to this group, the number of sons born declined. Thus, we see evidence that granting property rights to women could potentially impact fertility decisions, children’s health outcomes, and gender imbalance.

This paper examines whether economic empowerment of women improves their autonomy within their marital household, and investigates the mechanism, by exploiting variation from a legal reform aimed at improving women’s inheritance rights in India. Results suggest that the reform increased women’s participation in decisionmaking but at the expense of the older generation of household members and not at the expense of their husbands. Two channels are proposed to explain this phenomenon. First, this can be driven by a shift in the family structure from traditional joint families to nuclear households. Such a change is consistent both with the increase in women’s decision-making authority, which they can exert to move out of the joint household, as well as with men’s incentives, since men have weaker financial links with their parents post-reform. Second, even within joint families, the amendments empowered young couples at the expense of the older generation of household members.

Entrepreneurs may be legally bound to bequeath a minimal stake to noncontrolling heirs. The size of this stake can reduce investment in family firms, by reducing the future income they can pledge to external financiers. Using a purpose-built indicator of the permissiveness of inheritance law and data for 10,004 firms from 38 countries in 1990-2006, we find that stricter inheritance law is associated with lower investment in family firms but does not affect investment in nonfamily firms. Moreover, as the model predicts, inheritance law affects investment only in family firms that experience a succession.

This paper considers the German principality of Hesse-Cassel in the 1850s, comparing inheritance institutions and landholding inequality for roughly a thousand mostly agricultural villages and towns. The principality lay between impartible northern Europe and the partible southwest. Inequality in landholding size is measured, showing an average Gini of 0.615 and substantial variation across communities. Places with relatively larger populations and ones that practiced impartible inheritance had mostly higher wealth inequality. The main result is that inheritance norms played a role in causing higher landholding inequality. Higher emigration rates in the impartible communities helped to alleviate landholding inequality.

We use inheritance patterns over three generations of individuals to assess the impact of changes in the Hindu Succession Act that grant daughters equal coparcenary birth rights in joint family property that were denied to daughters in the past. We show that the amendment significantly increased daughters' likelihood to inherit land, but that even after the amendment, substantial bias persists. Our results also indicate a robust increase in educational attainment of daughters, suggesting an alternative channel of wealth transfer.

We analyze the impact of improved land inheritance rights for women in India on female empowerment by examining their educational attainment and the intergenerational effects of the reform. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that the amendment to the Hindu Succession Act significantly increased education of women from landed households by 0.48 years. However, our results indicate a significant decrease in the educational attainment of children, especially boys of treated mothers. We attribute this decrease to treated mothers who are better educated and able to assess the higher opportunity cost of education for boys.

We examine intra-household gender-differentiated effects of property rights securitisation following West Bengal’s tenancy registration program, using two independently gathered datasets. In both samples, higher program implementation increased male child survival rates in families without a firstborn son, but not in those that already have a firstborn male child. We argue this reflects intensified son preference as land rights improve, ostensibly to ensure a male heir to inherit land. Consistent with this, girls with firstborn brothers also experience increased survival, but not girls with firstborn sisters. The gender bias manifests both in infant mortality rates and the sex ratio at birth.