Women’s bargaining power and spending on children’s education: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

How women’s bargaining power affects children’s education remains an open question. This paper explores the impact of women’s bargaining power on children’s educational expenditure, using a sample comprising 5099 couples from China Family Panel Studies. The Difference-in-Differences approach is applied based on the natural experiment of an amendment to the Chinese Marriage Law concerning intrahousehold property ownership. We find that the decline in women’s bargaining power caused by the law amendment significantly reduces couples’ expenses on children’s education. Holding all the characteristics of the couple and time and regional factors constant, when women are deprived of their housing property, expenditure on children’s education drops by an average 35.9%. Further analysis shows that when the husband has a larger advantage in education and income, and stronger patriarchal beliefs, the wife’s bargaining power is affected more by the law amendment, with a larger significant negative effect on spending on children’s education. This paper suggests that policies that deteriorate gender equality can affect not only women’s status within the household but also household’s investment in child education.