Matrimonial Rights & Female Education

This article explores how prospective matrimonial rights affect female education. To isolate the causal effect, I focus on a South African reform that makes women joint administrators of marital property. Exploiting birth year variation in exposure to the reform I estimate the differences in educational trends of Sotho women around the country border. The results show that female education increases by 6–12 months. This finding is robust to using an alternative identification strategy exploiting variation between ethnic groups within South Africa. A placebo test validates there is no effect for male education.