Thimothée Demont (Aix-Marseille School of Economics)

The Impact of the Matrimonial Regime on Female Education and Labor Supply: Theory and Evidence from a Natural Experiment in France

co-author: Roberta Ziparo
 

Abstract

In 1966, France passed a game-changing law that reformed the common-law matrimonial regime towards a more egalitarian system and dramatically increased the rights of married women. We theoretically determine the incentives of parents to educate their daughters, given the future intra-household decision making process they are going to experience in adulthood. We show that, when the weight of women in the household increases and becomes more sensitive to changes in labour income, the parents prefer a higher level of education for their daughters. The probability of working in adulthood increases as well. We then use the French policy experiment to estimate the causal impact of a large and exogenous increase in the equality between husbands and wives within marriage. Consistent with the theory, we find that women who married under the new regime are between 2 and 5 percentage points more likely to be working more than 30 years after the reform, once maternity and child-rearing constraints are largely over. Moreover, anticipating greater possibilities to work and earn money, girls who were at pivotal education ages when the reform was announced chose to educate longer. The estimates indicate that girls at the end of secondary education increased their education by 0.22-0.25 year as a result of the matrimonial reform.