MEMOIRE

Présenté en vue de l'obtention du Master en Sciences de

Gestion

How is Fertility Impacted by Changes in Women’s

Inheritance Rights? Evidence from Kenya

Par Alexandra Laloux

Directeur: Professeur Paula Gobbi

Assesseur: Professeur Philippe Weil

Année académique 2019 - 2020

J’autorise la consultation de ce mémoire

How is Fertility Impacted by Changes in Women’s Inheritance
Rights? Evidence from Kenya

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact on fertility of the 1981 Law of Succession Act, a reform
granting women equal inheritance rights as men in Kenya. Using data from the Kenyan
Demographic and Health Surveys and following Harari (2018), I employ a difference-in-
differences strategy, which relies on variations in pre and post-reform inheritance rights, across
religious groups. I find that, for cohorts of women exposed to the reform, total fertility,
measured by the total children ever born per woman, significantly decreased by 1.33. This
finding suggests that, even in context of poor legal enforcement, reforms improving women’s
rights can have a significant impact.

I want to thank Paula Gobbi, my thesis director, who helped me in the choice of my subject and
allowed me to pursue my thesis. I am also very thankful to Claudio Costanzo, for the amount
of time and help he provided me during the writing of my thesis, his guidance and advices were
extremely helpful. I am grateful to the Solvay Brussels School for the quality of the education I
received throughout my years at the university. I also want to thank my parents for their
continuous and infinite support in my studies. Finally, I am very thankful to Hugo, who has
helped me for several exams and was always there to answer my questions on any topics.

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 1 Introduction

Since the 19th century, during which women were considered the property of their father or
their husband with no intrinsic rights, there has been a continuous improvement of women’s
rights. But global equal rights between men and women are still not achieved. Nowadays,
women’s legal rights account for approximately ¾ of the rights of men and only six countries
in the world have achieved equal legal rights between men and women. In many developing
countries, and especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, unequal inheritance and property rights are a
barrier to women’s empowerment as inheritance is one of the main ways to attain ownership of
land and property for women, and consecutively, to gain an economic and social status.
Moreover, studies have shown that reforms granting women equal rights as men boost the
economy. The Middle East, North Africa and South Asia are the most restrictive regions
concerning inheritance. Out of 187 economies studied by the World Bank in 2018, 75 still limit
women’s rights regarding the ownership and management of assets. But Sub-Saharan countries
have made a lot of progress on equalizing rights for men and women, with a high pace of
reforms implemented during the past decades (World Bank Group, 2019; World Bank Group,
2020).

Such reforms equalizing rights between men and women have been widely advocated by
development practitioners and international organizations, especially legal reforms granting
equal de jure rights in inheritance and family law. According to the 2012 World Bank Gender
Equality and Development Report, “To equalize voice within households, measures that
increase women’s control over household resources and laws that enhance the ability of women
to accumulate assets, especially by strengthening their property rights, are of particular
importance.” (World Bank, 2012). The literature also has a great interest in studying the impacts
of these type of reforms, especially in India, with the Hindu Succession Act. Overall, equal
inheritance rights tend to bring positive effects to an economy and beneficial effects for
women’s empowerment, although, a few negative effects have also been found. However, in
Sub-Saharan Africa, quantitative evidence on the impacts of those kind of reforms are scant. In
addition, one must keep in mind that a legal reform alone might not change much the de facto
rights of women, especially in environments where legal enforcements are poor and opposite
norms are deeply anchored (UN-HABITAT, 2006).

2
This paper studies the impacts that a reform on inheritance rights in Kenya had on total fertility.
More precisely, I use changes in pre and post-reform inheritance rights, across religious groups,
to determine the impacts that granting women equal inheritance rights has on total fertility.
Before the 1981 Law of Succession Act was implemented in Kenya, inheritance laws were
ruled by the customary law of the ethnic group to which the deceased belonged. In all ethnic
groups, inheritance rights for women were non-existents, except for Muslim women, which
were granted the right to receive half the share of what their brother received, according to the
Koranic Law. After the implementation of the Law of Succession Act in 1981, daughters were
entitled to receive the same share as their brothers, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.
However, after intense agitation by the Muslim community who did not agree with the Act, an
amendment was made in 1990, which exempted Muslim women, who reverted back to the
Islamic law.

Using data from the Kenyan Demographic and Health Surveys, that contain information on
Kenyan households since 1989, and following Harari (2018), I use a difference-in-differences
framework to estimate the causal impact of the 1981 reform on total fertility, according to
variations in inheritance rights and religious affiliation. However, the 1990 amendment to the
reform is not under study here, because women who were exposed to it have not finished their
fertility at the time of the last survey available. I find that total fertility is indeed impacted by
the inheritance reform. More precisely, for cohorts who were exposed to the reform, there is a
reduction of 1.33 to the total children ever born per woman.

These results coincide with several mechanisms about fertility. First, as explained by the
Kenyan Demographic and Health Surveys report of 2014, women’s education and wealth are
negatively correlated with fertility. Moreover, Harari (2018) shows that women’s education
was improved due to the 1981 Law of Succession in Kenya, plus, marriage and childbearing
were delayed. Second, an increase in women’s empowerment is often linked to lower fertility
levels, and, conversely, patriarchal factors are associated with lower levels of women’s
empowerment and thus higher fertility rates (Phan, 2013). The logic behind that is the
following: as women receive the right to inherit, their bargaining power improves in the
household and, consecutively, they are able to shift the decisions of the household towards their
preferences. Thus, these elements confirm that, following the reform, total fertility will
logically decrease.

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In addition, my results survive several checks and a placebo reform. First, I added different
control variables to the model in order to verify that the results are indeed due to the inheritance
reform, and not due to variations in other variables across time, such as the years of education
and the wealth index. Then, I estimated the impacts of a “placebo” reform, employing the same
criteria to identify the treatment group as for the 1981 reform. I used the introduction of the
1969 Constitution of Kenya, finding, as expected, zero effects, which proves that the decrease
in fertility is not simply caused by any legal reform, but rather by that reform in particular.

This paper contributes to the existing literature in two ways. First, a large strand of the literature
has studied the effects of changes in inheritance laws by focusing on the Indian Hindu
Succession Act. However, research on the impacts caused by reforms of property and
inheritance rights in Sub-Saharan Africa are insufficient. Moreover, although fertility and its
mechanisms have been widely studied across the world, few have actually studied how fertility
levels are impacted by reforms improving inheritance and property rights for women, especially
in Sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, this paper will bring a new addition to those two parts of the
existing literature. Furthermore, I add new insights to the paper of Harari (2018), which finds
significant improvements in several dimensions of women’s empowerment in Kenya, as a result
of the 1981 Law of Succession Act. Indeed, she was unable to analyze total fertility due to a
lack of data available. However, as these data are now accessible, I have the capability to pursue
it.

The rest of this paper is constructed as follows: section 2 provides an overview of what the
literature already contains concerning this topic, plus a more precise explanation of Harari’s
(2018) paper. Section 3 presents the background of the study, with Kenya’s basic demographic
information in the first subsection, and an explanation regarding the implementation of the 1981
Law of Succession Act and Kenya’s legal environment in the second subsection. In section 4 I
describe my data sources and in section 5 I present my model. Section 6 provides the results
and section 7 concludes.

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 2 Literature Review

In this section, I present what the literature already contains about inheritance and property
rights, and fertility. It is divided in two subsections. The first one contains the impacts of
changes in inheritance regimes and property rights on several aspects of women’s
empowerment and the mechanisms that influence fertility rates. The second subsection
describes in a more detailed way the paper of Harari (2018), which examines the impacts of the
inheritance rights reform in Kenya.

2.1 Inheritance and property rights, women’s empowerment and fertility

A great amount of literature has studied and analyzed the consequences of changes in
inheritance and property rights on different aspects of women’s empowerment. Indeed, in
several developing countries such as India, Indonesia, and some Sub-Saharan countries,
relatively recent reforms of inheritance regimes and property rights have allowed researchers
to analyze the impacts of those reforms on various variables.

Firstly, the Indian Hindu Succession Act is the reform that has received the most attention by
the literature. On one hand, some researchers have analyzed whether the reform has actually
resulted in an increase in inheritance for women. Deininger et al. (2013) and Deininger et al.
(2014) showed that the Hindu Succession Act amendment has indeed significantly increased
women’s likelihood to inherit. On the other hand, the effects of this law on women’s
empowerment have also been examined by the literature, and several positive consequences
have been found. First, diverse studies have shown that the reform has caused an increase in
female education (Deininger et al., 2013; Roy, 2015; Bose & Das, 2017). Second, Roy (2008)
and Mookerjee (2015) argue that there has been improvements in autonomy, bargaining power
and decision-making for women in their household. The reform has also brought improvements
to the working environment for women with increased labor force participation (Heath & Tan,
2016), increased firm creation by women and narrowed entrepreneurship gender gap
(Naaraayanan, 2019). Other positive effects found include a decrease in domestic abuse and
female suicides (Amaral, 2017), and an improvement in women’s health, poverty, mortality
and health investments in children (Calvi, 2016 and Calvi et al., 2018). However, some studies
have also found negative effects of the amendment for women such as exacerbated preference

5
for sons (Bhalotra et al., 2018), higher female mortality (Rosenblum, 2015), and increased
marital conflicts, suicides and wife beating (Anderson & Genicot, 2014), the latter contradicting
the findings of Amaral (2017).

Changes in inheritance laws and reforms regarding property rights have also been studied across
other countries. In Indonesia, Carranza (2012) uses cross-sectional data and time variation in
the application of the Islamic inheritance exclusion rule1 to argue that Muslim couples who
were more affected by the rule showed stronger son preference and practice sex-differential
fertility stopping, this attaining a higher proportion of sons and larger families. In Rwanda, a
pilot land tenure regularization program was shown by Ali et al. (2014) to have improved land
access for married women and led to a better recording, without gender bias, of inheritance
rights. In Ghana, La Ferrara & Milazzo (2017) presented evidence that, due the introduction of
the Intestate Succession law, parents substituted inheritance with investments in education.
More precisely, as the expected physical capital of their children increases, parents decreased
investments in their human capital, such as education.

Various researchers have analyzed the factors that affect fertility. According to Phan (2013), an
increase in women’s empowerment is generally associated with lower fertility levels. There are
four different channels through which women’s empowerment impacts fertility, which are
female education, female labor force participation, increased participation in decision-making,
and women’s use of contraceptives and population policies. This is supported by the literature
review on studies examining the relationship between fertility and women’s empowerment
done by Upadhyay et al. (2014), who argue that, in general, there is a positive association
between women’s empowerment and lower fertility rates. Eswaran (2002) also shows that the
increased bargaining power of women due to their increase in autonomy results in lower fertility
rates and child mortality rates. Following this logic, Godefroy (2018) uses the 1999 Nigerian
reform, that reduced female litigants’ rights in certain states, to show that when women’s rights
are reduced, fertility levels increase. This effect is explained by a shift of fertility decisions
towards the husband’s preferences and a higher probability of being married.

1
The Islamic inheritance exclusion rule is a basic Koranic principle, according to which male ascendants
(paternal grandfather, uncles, brothers or nephews) can only be excluded by a male descendant (son or son’s
son) from the distribution of wealth (Carranza, 2012).

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In addition to lower fertility rates, other researchers have shown that, when women are
empowered, they tend to invest more in children (Lundberg et al., 1997; Duflo & Udry, 2004;
Bobonis, 2009; Baranov et al., 2017). Plus, women’s empowerment is associated with increased
investments in girls (Baranov et al., 2017), which consecutively narrows the gender gap.

2.2 “Women’s Inheritance Rights and Bargaining Power: Evidence from Kenya.”
Harari (2018)

For the results presented later in this paper, I followed the methodology of Harari (2018). In
her paper, she analyzes the impact that the 1981 inheritance reform in Kenya had on several
aspects of women’s empowerment. Using data from the Kenyan Demographic and Health
Surveys, she finds several significant improvements, especially in women’s education and
health. More precisely, she employs a difference-in-differences strategy and, exploiting
variations in inheritance rights across religious groups, she shows that the introduction of the
1981 Law of Succession Act resulted in several positive effects. First, there has been an
improvement in education for girls, both in absolute terms and relative to boys. Second,
regarding health-related outcomes, she finds that the probability of undergoing genital
mutilation for girls has decreased and prenatal care has improved. Finally, she shows that for
women who were of marriageable age after the reform, marriage and motherhood tend to be
postponed, and participation in decision-making in the household has increased, as a
consequence of increased bargaining power. Her findings imply that, even in a context of poor
enforcement of legal reforms, equal inheritance rights between men and women are beneficial
for women.

However, Harari (2018) was unable to analyze total fertility following the inheritance reform
of 1981 due to data limitations. More precisely, information on women exposed to the reform
and who had finished their fertility was not available. Nonetheless, she chose to analyze
variations in age at marriage and childbearing and, seeing that both of them tend to be delayed
for exposed women, she predicted that fertility rates would plausibly decrease due to the reform.
That is why, the purpose of this paper is to follow Harari’s methodology and, thanks to a new
wave of data available, determine if fertility rates are indeed reduced following the reform.

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 3 Background

3.1 Kenya’s demographics

The Kenyan population has seen a rapid boom in the past decades. According to the Department
of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, total population in Kenya has risen from
6.077 million in 1950 to 53.771 million in 2020. Figure 1 below shows the growth of the
population in Kenya in thousands.

60 000

50 000

40 000

30 000

20 000

10 000

0
1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020

Figure 1: Total population in Kenya from 1950 to 2020. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019, custom data acquired via website.

Regarding fertility, the country has experienced a quick fall since 1968. More precisely, in
1968, the mean number of children per woman was 8.11 and it has been decreasing ever since,
with a number of 3.416 children per woman in 2020. The projections after 2020 have been
made by The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations, which predicts
that, by the year 2050, total fertility would be 2.394. Figure 2 below shows the evolution of
total fertility (children per woman) since 1950 with predictions until 2050.

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 8,50
8,00
7,50
7,00
6,50
6,00
5,50
5,00
4,50
4,00
3,50
3,00
2,50
2,00
55 5

60 0

65 5

70 0

75 5

80 0

85 5

90 0

95 5

00 0

05 5

10 0

15 5

20 0

25 5

30 0

35 5

40 0
45 5
0
95

19 96

19 96

19 97

19 97

19 98

19 98

19 99

19 99

20 00

20 00

20 01

20 01

20 02

20 02

20 03

20 03

20 04
20 204
05
-1

-1

-1

-1

-1

-1

-1

-1

-1

-2

-2

-2

-2

-2

-2

-2

-2

-2

-2
-
50
19

19

Figure 2: Total fertility (children per woman) in Kenya from 1950 to 2050. United Nations, Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019, custom data acquired
via website.

Kenya is a highly fragmented country with regard to ethnic and religious groups. According to
the 2019 Census, 85.5% of Kenya’s inhabitants are Christians, which comprises 20.6% of
Catholics, 33.4% of Protestants and 20.4% of Evangelical churches. Muslims account for
10.91% of the population while the remaining 3.6% represent the Hindus, the traditional
religions, the other religions and the Atheists. Concerning ethnic groups, the 2019 Census
reports that there are more than 40 different ethnic groups in Kenya, of which the biggest are
the Kikuyu (17.1%), the Luhya (14.3%), the Kalenjin (13.3%), the Luo (10,6%), the Kamba
(9.8%) and the Kisii (5.7%).

3.2 Kenya’s inheritance law

In many Sub-Saharan countries, inheritance practices are regulated through statutory and/or
customary laws (Cooper, 2011b) which makes them an interesting, because unique,
environment for studying inheritance and property rights for women. In Kenya, there is a
particularly complex mix between statutory law, customary law and Islamic law, as the 1969
Constitution acknowledged the legal pluralism of customary law and Islamic law to be applied
in certain instances. More precisely, in matters such as adoption, marriage and divorce, and
inheritance, the Constitution’s Section 82(4) indicates that the customary law of the tribe to

9
which the individual belongs could be applied. For Muslims, Islamic law is to be applied and
enforced by Kadhi Courts.

Inheritance systems have always been quite complex in Kenya, due to its colonial history and
to its highly fragmented ethnic and religious environment. Before the entry into force of the
1981 Law of Succession Act, the law regarding inheritance was composed of four different
succession systems for Africans, Europeans, Muslims, and Hindus. The African customary
inheritance law was provided, by the 1897 Order in Council, to be applicable to natives, as long
as it was not repugnant to justice and morality. Regarding the Muslims, the 1897 Native Courts
Regulations legally permitted the application of the law contained in the Quran. In 1907,
Islamic courts, known as Kadhi courts, were legally established and decided matters of personal
and succession law for Muslims. Finally, the European population was ruled by the British
Indian Succession Act (1865) while the Hindu population was ruled by Hindu Customary law.

As the years passed, there was a growing desire for a succession system that would be
applicable, without any distinction, to all Kenyans (Badbess, 2019). In 1967, the President
created a commission to look into matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. The
commission then published, in 1968, a report which recommended a uniform code of
inheritance, and in 1972, a bill, known as the Law of Succession Act (Cap 160), was passed.
However, it only came into force in 1981. The Law of Succession Act brought equal inheritance
rights for female and male children on their parents’ assets, whether they are married or not
(Section 38). This provision can be applied in case of testate succession without reasonable
support for any dependents. In the case where the succession is intestate, it is applied
automatically.

When there is a surviving spouse and a child, the spouse has the right to an absolute interest in
the deceased’s personal and household effects, and a life interest in the residue of the estate,
such as land or businesses (Sections 35 and 36). In order to protect widows from expulsion or
property grabbing, a court’s permission is needed to get rid of those assets. Even though the
Law of Succession Act treats children of different sex as equals with regard to inheritance from
a deceased, some discriminatory customs remain in the treatment of survival spouses, amongst
others. Indeed, if the surviving spouse is a man and if he remarries, his interests are maintained,
whereas if the surviving spouse is a woman, a remarriage will invalidate her interests. Only
when the surviving spouse dies, or remarries in the case of a woman, will the children inherit

10
the estate. In case there is no surviving spouse or children, the estate will be passed in the
following order of priority: father, mother, brothers and sisters (and any of their children if they
are deceased) (Section 39). Finally, if the unions are polygamous, the estate will be split among
the houses depending on the number of children in each of them (Section 40).

According to the Muslims, the Act was contrary to Islamic faith and they considered it as a
reject of the assurance they had been given at independence. Moreover, they viewed it as
unconstitutional, because it compromised their freedom of religion. An amendment was
adopted in 1990, which exempted Muslims from the Act. More precisely, for people who passed
away as Muslims, the Kadhi courts regained jurisdiction in matters of inheritance. However,
this amendment was criticized following the logic that Muslims should not be regarded as
special, considering the fact that the Law of Succession Act also compromised important
principles for other religious or ethnic groups. The Islamic inheritance law, as indicated in the
Quran, states that, at the death of the husband, the widow receives ¼ of his estates. In cases of
polygamous unions, women inherit 1/8 if they don’t have children. The rest of the estate is
divided among the children in the following way: the daughters get half of the sons’ parts. Even
though the Quran recognized testate and intestate succession, only 1/3 of a deceased’s estate
can be disposed of by will (UN-HABITAT, 2005).

Unfortunately, the Section 82(4) of the Constitution recognizes legal pluralism, which gives
right to customary systems of law to govern inheritance. As a result of this, inconsistencies on
women’s inheritance rights are present in the application of laws in Kenyans courts, and are
expected to continue if no reforms are introduced (Cooper, 2011a).

4 Description of the data

For the purpose of this paper, I used data from the Kenyan Demographic and Health Surveys
(DHS). The Demographic and Health Surveys Program is collecting data from developing
countries in order to provide nationally representative and accurate data on matters such as
fertility, health (both maternal and child), family planning, HIV/AIDS, etc., with a particular
emphasis on female. In Kenya, several waves of data gathering have been done: 1989 (DHS-I),
1993 (DHS-2), 1998 (DHS-III), 2003 (DHS-IV), 2008-2009 (DHS-V) and 2014 (DHS-VI), and

11
all of them have been used for the results presented later in this paper. All these waves contain
information from approximately 5,000 to 10,000 household surveys. In each of those
households, women aged 15 to 49 were subject to a questionnaire on the matters cited above.
DHS also gathered information on their youngest children’s health. For all other household
members, basic data were also gathered such as demographic information, and information on
education.

As explained above, due to data limitations at the time, Harari (2018) was unable to analyze
total fertility. The fact is that she lacked information on women who were exposed to the reform
and had already finished their fertility. Instead, she analyzed whether the reform had caused
delays in marriage and childbearing for women exposed to it. The wave of 2014 (DHS-VI),
which wasn’t available, is the one that allows me, in complement with the other waves, to
analyze total fertility. Indeed, DHS-VI gives me information on women born between 1964 and
1999 and who were both exposed to the reform and had finish their fertility at the time of the
survey.

In order to analyze whether fertility was impacted by the reform, I appended all the waves
together. By doing that, I ended up with a sample of 70,289 women aged 15 to 49 at the time
of the different surveys. I thus had information on a large group of women born between 1939
and 1999. Subsequently, I dropped all observations of women who were under 45 years old
when they responded to the survey, in order to have information only on women who have
approximately finished their fertility. In fine, I have a sample of 4922 Kenyan women born
between 1939 and 1969, and who were between 45 and 49 years old when they answered the
survey. 462 of those women are Muslims and 4460 are non-Muslims. The variable of interest
in this paper is the total children ever born for each woman, which is available in all DHS
waves. Descriptive statistics of the different variables used for the results presented later are
displayed in table 1 below.

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 Variable N Mean Min Max Sd
Total children ever born 4922 6.2196 0 17 2.9969
Urban 4922 0.2219 0 1 0.4155
Year of birth 4922 1959.17 1939 1969 9.1693
Current age of respondent 4922 46.74 45 49 1.4478
Muslim 4922 0.094 0 1 0.291
Non-Muslim 4922 0.906 0 1 0.291
Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the variables total children ever born, urban, year of birth, current age of
respondent, Muslim and Non-Muslim, all DHS waves.

As previously explained, Kenya has a large number of ethnic groups and the population is
divided into many different religions. Also, because the Constitution recognizes legal pluralism,
in inheritance matters, amongst others, customary law of an individual’s tribe is to be applied.
It is thus important to take into account ethnic groups in the model. Plus, in order to control for
province-related variations, provinces must also be included. Table 2 below shows the
proportion of people in each ethnic group and province.

Variable: Ethnicity N % Variable: Province N %

Kalenjin 233 4,73 Nairobi 432 8,78
Kamba 496 10,08 Central 487 9,89
Kikuyu 643 13,06 Coast 791 16,07
Kisii 869 17,65 Eastern 727 14,77
Luhya 400 8,13 Nyanza 1045 21,23
Luo 646 13,12 Rift Valley 442 8,98
Meru/Embu 373 7,58 Western 575 11,68
Mijikenda/Swahili 154 3,13 Other 423 8,6
Somali 229 4,65 Total 4922 100
Others 879 17,87
Total 4922 100
Table 2: Proportion of people in each ethnic group and province, all DHS waves.

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 5 Model

5.1 Treatment

Following Harari (2018), I used a difference-in-differences model to analyze whether there is

a variation in the total number of children ever born before and after the reform. A difference-
in-differences estimation is typically used to check the impact of a policy change, the passage
of a new law, or the implementation of a large scale-program. It is done by comparing the
changes in outcomes over time between a treatment group, which is the exposed group (the
group that has been treated), and a control group, which is the unexposed group. Difference-in-
differences only works when the difference in the outcomes between the treatment and the
control group is not due to changes in any other factors than the reform under study (for
example, there must be no differential trends). The causal effect of the policy change is
measured by the difference-in-differences estimator. In this paper, I estimate the impact of the
1981 reform on total fertility, by analyzing variations between the treatment group (women
exposed to the reform) and the control group, across Muslims and non-Muslims. Basically, the
hypothesis behind this model is that, in the absence of an inheritance rights reform, the trend in
fertility would have been the same over time across different religious groups.

As previously explained, the reform took place at two different times. First, with the 1981 Law
of Succession, which allowed all women to inherit the same portion of inheritance as their male
counterparts, prior to which, non-Muslim women inherited nothing, and Muslim women
inherited half the part of their brothers. Then, the 1990 amendment to the reform, which
excluded Muslim women, who reverted back to inheriting half the share of their brothers. As
fertility is the variable of interest in this paper, the impact of the 1990 amendment will not be
analyzed, because women who were exposed to it have typically not finish their fertility by the
time of the last wave available for this study (DHS-VI). For this analysis, I will thus focus on
the differences between the pre-1981 inheritance regime and the post-1981 one. Both regimes
are described in table 3 below.

14
 Pre-1981 Post-1981
Muslims 0.5 1
Non-Muslims 0 1
Table 3: Inheritance regimes. Share inherited by daughters/share inherited by sons.

As the first DHS wave contains information on surveys done in 1988 and 1989, I can’t exactly
know what the mean age at first birth was in 1981, at the time of the reform, in order to define
my treatment group. Nonetheless, I decided to define the treatment group as women who were
18 years old or younger in 1981. The main reason for this choice of treatment is that,
information on the mean age at first birth in the first wave is the closest information available
to the year 1981, and at that time, the mean age at first birth was 18 years old (see table 4
below).

Variable N Mean 25th 75th Sd

percentile percentile
Age at first birth, DHS-I (1988/1989) 5507 18.26 16 20 3.30
Age at first birth, all DHS waves 51851 19.09 17 21 3.56
Table 4: Descriptive statistics of the variable age at first birth, DHS-I and all DHS waves.

Moreover, until 1985, children were graduating from secondary school at the age of 19 years
old (Ferré, 2009) and as shown by Harari (2018) for the case of Kenya, and Deininger et al.
(2013) and Roy (2015) regarding the Hindu Succession Act, improved inheritance rights tend
to translate into an increase in girls’ education. It is thus plausible that, women who were 18
years old or younger at the time of the reform in 1981 have increased their years of education
(by going to university for example), which might in turn cause an increase of the mean age at
first birth.

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5.2 Specification

The difference-in-differences model used is the following:

yitepdw = α + β0 . nonMuslimi + β1 . post81t + β2 . post81t . nonMuslimi + λ . Urbanitepdw +

θe + αp + ηw + μt + φp x t + ASAL x t + εitepdw

Where y is the dependent variable, which is the number of children ever born for a woman i,
born in year t, of ethnicity e, living in province p and district d, questioned in wave w. Urban
is a control variable for whether the respondent lives in a urban or rural type of residence. The
fixed effects are represented by θe for ethnicity, αp for the province, ηw for the wave and μt for
the year of birth. φp x t and ASAL x t are both representing respectively a province time trend
and an Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL)2 time trend.

The dummy variable post81 represents the treatment and is thus equal to 1 if the individual is
born during or after 1963. The variable nonMuslim is also a dummy variable that takes the value
1 if the respondent is not Muslim. The coefficient of interest is the interaction coefficient β2,
also called the difference-in-differences estimator, which allows me to analyze the difference
between Muslim and non-Muslim women in differences between the respondents who were
exposed to the reform of 1981 and those who were not. Table 5 below shows descriptive
statistics of the dummy variables of interest used in this regression.

Variables N Mean Min Max Sd

Post81 4922 0.5185 0 1 0.4997
Non-Muslim 4922 0.9061 0 1 0.2917
Post81 x Non-Muslim 4922 0.461 0 1 0.4985
Table 5: Descriptive statistics of the dummy variables post81, nonMuslim and post81 x nonMuslim; all DHS waves.

2
Arid and Semi-Arid Lands are areas suffering from a high level of poverty. They have been subject to specific
reforms and policies from the government, such as the abolition of school fees in 1971 from the 1st grade to the
4th grade of primary school, which was then applied to the whole country in 1973 (Ngugi et al., 2015 & Ferré,
2009).

16
As mentioned above, Kenya is a highly fractionized country in terms of ethnic and religious
groups. Moreover, as legal pluralism is recognized by the Section 82(4) of the Constitution,
customary law of an individual’s tribe can be applied in some instances, such as inheritance.
Thus, ethnicity dummies are necessary to grasp time-invariant characteristics and to control for
different traditions and customs amongst each ethnic group. Additionally, I included province
fixed effects and a province time trend effect to control for region and group-related effects that
might be correlated with the error term.

6 Results

In this section, I present the impacts that the 1981 reform had on total fertility. Table 7 below
displays the OLS estimates of the effect of the reform on fertility. In both columns, the
dependent variable is the total children ever born. The first three independent variables are the
dummies created for the model as explained in the previous section. As a reminder, Post81 = 1
for women born in or after 1963, so for women who were 18 years old or younger at the time
of the reform, Non-Muslim = 1 for non-Muslim women and Post81 x Non-Muslim is the
interaction term. Urban is a control variable that is equal to one if the woman lives in an urban
environment. Column (2) contains the same independent variables as in column (1), but with
the addition of the following control variables: DHS wave, ethnicity, province, year of birth
fixed effects; province time trend and ASAL time trend. Standard errors are clustered at the
religious group x birth year level.

Estimates in table 6, column (1), show that the 1981 reform causes a significant decrease of
1.33 to the total children ever born. This is not surprising, considering that there are several
mechanisms through which inheritance laws are expected to impact fertility. First, Heath & Tan
(2016) argue that inheritance reforms can increase the bargaining power of women into their
household. This increased bargaining power can in turn have an impact on fertility rates as
women’s preferences for less children are more accounted for into the household. Also,
according to Sen (2001), women’s empowerment is an important channel to reduce fertility
levels. Moreover, as shown by Harari (2018), Kenyan women have significantly delayed their
fertility following the two reforms in 1981 and in 1990. Indeed, after the reforms, women tend
to invest their time and money in education and to postpone marriage and childbirth. Following

17
this logic, total fertility rates are expected to decline. Another channel through which a decrease
in fertility rates is expected is the optimal bequest channel as families might want to avoid
fragmentation of their assets. Moreover, women living in an urban residence have 1.76 less
children compare to those living in a rural residence. This was also expected, as studies on
urban-rural fertility variation have shown that fertility levels are lower in large settlements and
cities and higher in rural areas and small towns (Kulu, 2011).

Estimates depicted in column (2) of table 6 shows that my results survive the addition of several
control variables. Indeed, after the inclusion of those control variables, the post81 x Non-
Muslim value is still highly significant, and it doesn’t change much, with a diminution of 1.328
children per woman due to the introduction of the 1981 Law of Succession.

Dependent variable: Total children ever born (1) (2)

Post81 -0.0141562 0.6841886
(0.2734524) (1.355708)

Non-Muslim -0.1585314 -0.177145

(0.2484756) (0.2380754)

Post81 x Non-Muslim -1.334882*** -1.328852***

(0.3020823) (0.3312569)

Urban -1.760382*** -1.363823***

(0.1449805) (0.1101132)

Observations 4918 4918

R-squared 0.1256 0.2043
Table 6: (1) OLS estimates of the effect of the reform on fertility. All DHS waves, women above 45 years old.
Post81 = 1 for women born in or after 1963. (2) Same as (1) but with additional controls: DHS wave, ethnicity,
province, year of birth fixed effects; province time trend and ASAL time trend. Standard errors are clustered at the
religious group x birth year level and reported in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

Table 7 below reports several robustness checks to which my results are resistant. These checks
contain the same control variables as previously (DHS wave, ethnicity, province, year of birth
fixed effects; province time trend and ASAL time trend), and standard errors are clustered at
the religious group x birth year level. In column (1), I add new control variables, which are the
wealth index and years of education, and the results are still negative and significant, with a
decrease of 0.53 children per woman exposed to the reform.

18
In column (2), I introduce a placebo reform taking place in 1969, which coincides with the
introduction of the Constitution of 1969. This placebo reform is administered to the control
group, who was unexposed to the 1981 reform. The new treatment under the placebo reform is
women who were 18 years old or younger in 1969 and thus, were born between 1951 and 1962.
As expected, it yields insignificant results, showing that my results are effectively due to an
inheritance reform and not due to any other type of legal reform. In addition, I analyzed whether
the impacts of the 1981 reform occurred in the same way across ethnic groups or not. Results,
presented in table 8 in the appendices, are not conclusive, as most of them were omitted due to
collinearity.

Dependent variable: Total children ever born (1) (2)

Post81 1.340155
(1.347771)

Non-Muslim -0.0413966
(0.2532558)

Post81 x Non-Muslim -0.534070*

(0.3121371)

Placebo: born between 1951 and 1962 x Non- -0.4235811

Muslim (0.5341738)

Non-Muslim 0.0738166
(0.4621058)

Urban -0.5047561*** -1.716971***

(0.0917393) (0.2046054)

Wealth Index -0.3958348***

(0.0525989)

Years of education -0.1024473***

(0.0247942)
Observations 3530 2367
R-squared 0.2691 0.1672
Table 7: (1) Robustness check of OLS estimates. All DHS waves, women above 45 years old. Post81 = 1 for
women born in or after 1963. Additional controls: DHS wave, ethnicity, province, year of birth fixed effects;
province time trend and ASAL time trend; wealth index and years of education. (2) Placebo test: women born
between 1951 and 1962. All DHS waves, women above 45 years old. Additional controls: DHS wave, ethnicity,
province, year of birth fixed effects; province time trend and ASAL time trend. Standard errors are clustered at the
religious group x birth year level and reported in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

19
Altogether, these results suggest that the 1981 reform of the inheritance system did have a
significant impact on total fertility in Kenya. As estimated by Harari (2018), women who were
exposed to the reform have accordingly lower fertility rates than those who were not. Moreover,
these findings imply that, even in context of poor legal enforcement and deeply anchored
opposite social norms, legal reforms such as the 1981 Law of Succession Act can have an
impact. Even though customs seem very hard to change in some countries of the Sub-Saharan
region, it is currently undergoing many similar reforms granting equal rights to women and
implementing new constitutions, which might be an important starting point.

7 Conclusion

Today, women are still fighting to have the same rights as their male counterparts, and many
countries around the world are introducing new laws and reforms in order to achieve a more
equal legal environment for women. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the regions that have shown
great progress in this regard, with a high pace of reforms being implemented. However, there
are deeply rooted norms that oppose equality between men and women in most countries of
Sub-Saharan Africa, and de jure changes in women’s rights does not necessarily mean de facto
improvements.

In this paper, I studied how total fertility is impacted by changes in inheritance reforms granting
women equal rights as men. More precisely, I used the context of the 1981 Law of Succession
Act in Kenya, to see whether fertility rates increase or decrease following its implementation.
I worked with data from the Kenyan Demographic and Health Surveys and I exploited
variations in inheritance rights, across Muslim and non-Muslim groups, to analyze how fertility
was impacted by the reform. I restricted my sample to women who were above 45 years old
when they answered the survey, in order to have information on women who had approximately
finished their fertility. Then, I compared women who were 18 years old or younger in 1981,
which represents the treatment group, to women who were older than 18 years old in 1981. I
found that, for women who were exposed to the reform, total fertility, which corresponds to the
total children ever born per woman, significantly decreased by 1.33. This is consistent with
several mechanisms. First, the reform increased the bargaining power of women, which were
then able to shift the household decisions closer to their preferences, and they generally desire

20
less children compared to their husband. Second, families might want to avoid a fragmentation
of their property and assets and are thus reducing their optimal number of children. Third,
women’s empowerment is usually negatively correlated with fertility rates.

Moreover, I made some robustness checks to verify the strength of these results. First, I added
several control variables, which did not discredit my results, that were still negative and
significant. Then, I used a placebo reform on the unexposed cohorts, which coincided with the
introduction of the 1969 Constitution, and I found zero effects, showing that the results were
not due to any type of changes in the legal environment of the country, but to this reform in
particular.

On the whole, the results suggest that, even in context of poor legal enforcements, legal reforms
such as the Law of Succession Act can have an impact. Indeed, the Kenyan Constitution
acknowledges legal plurality, which means that in certain instances, such as inheritance, the
customary law of the tribe to which the individual belongs can be applied. This causes many
inconsistencies on how women’s inheritance rights are treated in Kenyans courts. However,
this paper shows that the reform did have an impact, and thus, that the pro-women reforms that
are being implemented in many Sub-Saharan countries are an important starting point to make
a significant change.

However, in this paper, I was not able to analyze the impact caused by the reform as a whole.
Indeed, after the 1981 implementation of the reform, there was an amendment in 1990, which
exempted Muslim women from the rule, creating 3 different inheritance regimes: the pre-1981,
the post-1981/pre-1990 and the post-1990. Due to the fact that women who were exposed to
the amendment have not finished their fertility yet, I was unable to analyze it. For future
research, a complete analysis, taking into account the amendment of 1990, would bring a more
complete understanding of how fertility rates were impacted by the Law of Succession Act.

21
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9 Appendix

Dependent variable: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Total children ever Kalenjin Kamba Kikuyu Kisii
born
Post 81 -2.733596 -4.493459* 2.248008 -0.020567
(2.139647) (2.4131) (2.95885) (0.3741409)

Non-Muslim X -1.875681 0.9733494 2.261422***

(2.01588) (1.771568) (0.43445)

Post 81 x Non- X 3.681362* -1.99956 X

Muslim (2.172703) (2.853321)

Urban -1.475218** -1.211815*** -1.307472*** -1.083499***

(0.6889468) (0.2780476) (0.2842151) (0.1390184)

Observations 233 495 643 869

R-squared 0.4142 0.1488 0.1812 0.3411
Dependent variable: (5) (6) (7) (8)
Total children ever Luhya Luo Meru Mijikenda/S
born wahili
Post 81 -1.190345 -1.985496 -2.472529 7.892184**
(0.9346444) (1.817655) (2.388134) (3.103802)

Non-Muslim -0.6984517 -2.307004 -3.216164*** 0.8449623

(1.551012) (1.462409) (0.2922171) (0.8093933)

Post 81 x Non- X 1.986125 2.691887 X

Muslim (1.67775) (2.236988)

Urban -0.7560006* -1.20266*** -1.216164*** -0.8665963

(0.4003995) (0.3456435) (0.2922171) (1.703393)

Observations 400 646 373 154

R-squared 0.2854 0.1436 0.1874 0.2548
Table 8: OLS estimates of the effect of the reform on fertility across Ethnic Groups. All DHS waves, women above
45 years old. Post81 = 1 for women born in or after 1963. Additional controls: DHS wave, ethnicity, province,
year of birth fixed effects; province time trend and ASAL time trend. Standard errors are clustered at the religious
group x birth year level and reported in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

25