Abstract: This paper explores the influence of inheritance rights on women’s empowerment in India. We employ the quasi-natural experiment framework wherein five states amended the Hindu Succession Act (HSA) from 1976 to 1994 before it was federally amended in 2005. We adopt a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy alongside a triangulation approach to pinpoint indicators of women’s empowerment. These indicators include access to resources, agency, and outcomes, which collectively measure various dimensions of empowerment. Using the India Human Development Survey 2004-05 (IHDS-I), our results indicate a positive impact of HSA amendments on economic participation, attitude towards intimate partner violence, physical, and civil autonomy. However, there is a negative impact of this change in law on household autonomy and no significant impact on marriage choice for women exposed to state amendments. Further, we explore the heterogeneities in findings regarding socio-economic status, location, level of patriarchy in a state, and gender of the head of the household. Overall, the study highlights that the impact of inheritance law is not uniform across different groups. 

Abstract: While migration is a largely discussed form of labor mobility, internal return migration of workers has not received much attention. Individuals return to their native or previous place either for reasons related to work, distress, or family. Not only are they returning to a place that is familiar to them in terms of language, culture, and society, but also, they may have acquired some skills before returning. Therefore, labor market outcomes for return migrants are likely to differ from those of nonmigrants, who are otherwise similar to each other in most aspects. Against this context, the paper compares the earnings of internal return migrants with nonmigrants in India using the Periodic Labor Force Survey 2020–21. To this end, the study performs ordinary least square estimation by sector (rural and urban), gender, age cohorts, and employment activity status (self-employed, regular salaried, casual labor). As part of robustness analysis, it also uses the propensity score matching method. Both the exercises suggest that internal return migrants, on average, experience an earnings penalty in rural areas but a premium in urban areas. Also, a regular salaried internal return migrant experiences an earnings premium irrespective of the location (rural or urban). The earning pattern for men largely imitates the overall pattern. However, the earnings differential between female internal return migrants and nonmigrants is not significant as most of them migrate because of reasons other than work, like marriage. The findings of this study have significant implications, as what individuals do and how much they earn upon their return have direct consequences on the employment and income distribution of any region.