Women’s Suffrage and Children’s Education

Abstract

While a growing literature shows that women, relative to men, prefer greater investment in children, it is unclear whether empowering women produces better economic outcomes. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in US suffrage laws, we show that exposure to suffrage during childhood led to large increases in educational attainment for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, especially Blacks and Southern Whites. We also find that suffrage led to higher earnings alongside education gains, although not for Southern Blacks. Using newly digitized data, we show that education increases are primarily explained by suffrage-induced growth in education spending, although early-life health improvements may have also contributed. (JEL H75, I21, I22, J13, J15, J16, N32)

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