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 |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 532-560 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | Journal of Human Resources |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 13 Apr 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2023 |
Funding
Junjian acknowledges financial support from Peking University (No. 7100603788) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 8206100449).
Keywords
- Household behavior
- Intergenerational investment
- Intrahousehold bargaining power
- Marital property law
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