INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSFERS IN PHILIPPINE RICE VILLAGES - GENDER DIFFERENCES IN TRADITIONAL INHERITANCE CUSTOMS

This paper examines education, land, and nonland asset transfers from parents to children in five rice villages in the Philippines. A model with family fixed effects explains transfers better than either individual heterogeneity or observed parent and child characteristics without family fixed effects. Families facing different land constraints exhibit significantly different patterns of educational investment in children. In a subsample with completed inheritance, daughters receive less education, land, and total inheritance, but are compensated with nonland assets. Parents also exhibit preferential behavior towards children of the same gender: daughters of better educated mothers receive more land, nonland assets and total inheritance; better educated fathers give land preferentially to sons, but favor daughters in education.