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Demographic responses to a political transformation: Evidence of women’s empowerment from Nepal

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  • Paudel, Jayash
  • de Araujo, Pedro

Abstract

During the 2006 Democratic Movement in Nepal, the parliament unanimously decided to strip the over two century-old Shah monarchy of absolute power. We study the short-run effects of the arrival of democracy on different measures of women’s empowerment by exploiting exogenous variation in the government through abolition of the monarchy. This paper employs a propensity score matching estimator to evaluate the linkage between change in political regime and opinions related to women’s empowerment from 2006 Nepal Demographic and Health Surveys (NDHS). Results show that women’s say in decision making increased significantly, and opinions on violence against women strengthened. We further scrutinize the treatment effect estimates with Rosenbaum bounds and observe if they are sensitive to possible hidden selection bias. We also test for heterogeneity of the treatment effect across gender and find that males report higher probability of mutual household decision-making among couples than females.

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  • Paudel, Jayash & de Araujo, Pedro, 2017. "Demographic responses to a political transformation: Evidence of women’s empowerment from Nepal," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 325-343.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcecon:v:45:y:2017:i:2:p:325-343
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jce.2016.07.003
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    Cited by:

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    4. Laszlo, Sonia & Grantham, Kate & Oskay, Ecem & Zhang, Tingting, 2020. "Grappling with the challenges of measuring women's economic empowerment in intrahousehold settings," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    5. Paudel, Jayash, 2021. "Beyond the Blaze: The Impact of Forest Fires on Energy Poverty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    6. Ziqi Wang & Ziyao Huang & Jingjing Cai, 2023. "Does the One-Child Policy Improve Chinese Human Capital? A Propensity Score Matching Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(16), pages 1-24, August.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monarchy; Women’S empowerment; Propensity score matching estimator;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C13 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Estimation: General
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • J19 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Other
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

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