How Education Empowers Women in Developing Countries

Le, Kien and Nguyen, My (2020): How Education Empowers Women in Developing Countries.

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impacts of education on women’s relational empowerment, within a context of 70 developing countries across the world. Exploiting the variation in educational attainment between biological sisters, we find that education is positively associated with women’s intra-household decision making authority in both financial and non-financial domains. Moreover, education reduces relational friction, especially women’s exposure to psychological abuse. Our mechanism analyses provide suggestive evidence that these improvements could be attributed to increased access to information, assortative matching, and better labor market outcome.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Education, women’s empowerment, developing countries
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J1 - Demographic Economics; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development

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