Resource information
This study exploits a natural experiment
to investigate the impact of land reform on the fertility
outcomes of households in rural Ethiopia. Public policies
and customs created a situation where Ethiopian households
could influence their usufruct rights to land via a
demographic expansion of the family. The study evaluates the
impact of the abolishment of these pronatal property rights
on fertility outcomes. By matching aggregated census data
before and after the reform with administrative data on the
reform, a difference-in-differences approach between reform
and non-reform districts is used to assess the impact of the
reform on fertility outcomes. The impact appears to be
large. The study estimates that women in rural areas reduced
their life-time fertility by 1.2 children due to the reform.
Robustness checks show that the impact estimates are not
biased by spillovers or policy endogeneity.
