The Gains From Self-Ownership and the Expansion of Women's Rights

摘要

We believe that an explicit incorporation of property rights into family economics has the potential to illuminate important questions that have eluded the standard common preference model of the family. Our analysis of the shift in property rights from coverture, a system in which men controlled women and owned their output, to self-ownership, a system in which women own themselves and their output and contract freely with others, is but one example. We analyze these two systems to develop the comparative statics of institutional change and show how greater potential returns to market work and human-capital investment increase the gains from self-ownership. This approach stresses the idea that in many cases men gain from enhanced property rights for women. The cumulative weight of our evidence suggests that women's rights tended to evolve in accordance with our predictions. First, historical exemptions from coverture and private contracting out of coverture are consistent with our model. Second, econometric analysis of state laws shows that increases in wealth and the growth of cities (and their attendant specialized markets) is associated with the expansion of women's rights. Greater levels of female human capital (as measured by greater rates of female schooling) also are associated with the expansion of women's rights/This last finding is robust to controls for the endogenous effect of rights expansion on human-capital acquisition. There are many potential extensions of this study. First, though we take a market approach that generates demand for changes in property rights, we do include several political control variables in our empirics. A more complete political model would consider the cost of such changes and how political institutions might influence these costs. Second, while our study has focused on the historical development of women's rights under Anglo-American law, our approach has promise for understanding the varying treatment of women across countries. Market expansion and growth in wealth and female human capital are also predicted to lead to expansions in women's property rights across countries.