This project used the 1999 wave of the Rural Economic and Demographic Survey (REDS), which is a representative survey of rural households in the 17 major states of India.18,19 The REDS 99 contains detailed retrospective information on individual characteristics of all members of the household, including daughters who have married and left the household, provided by the household head. I focus on women who are daughters of the head of the household and at least 22 years of age at the time of survey (this ensures that women in the sample have completed their education). In addition, I restrict the sample to Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and Jain women (i.e. those who were governed by the original HSA 1956 and thereby were affected by the reform), since almost 92% of the women in this dataset belong to these religions. I also restrict the sample to only landed households, since land is the most commonly held form of joint family/ancestral property in India. Finally, some of the mothers of these women may themselves have been young enough to have been exposed to the reform. To avoid any confounding impact on outcomes of daughters through their mothers, I restrict the sample to only those mothers who were unexposed to the reform i.e. were 44 years or older at the time of survey.20 Hence my sample comprises of daughters who were at least 22 years old at survey and whose mothers were at least 44 years old at survey in landed, Hindu households. This leaves me with a sample size of 4207 women.

The project uses Rural Economic and Demographic Surveys(REDS) survey data. This survey is part of the Rural Economic and Demographic Surveys (REDS) which collected economic, demographic, and village-level information from a nationally representative sample of rural households. In addition to extensive household income and expenditures questionnaires, information was also collected about women's reproductive histories. The reference period for this survey covered the 1998-1999 agricultural season. In 1999, the sample consisted of the approximately 4,500 households in 259 villages that were surveyed in 1982. The REDS surveys continued studying the households that participated in ARIS (Additional Rural Incomes Survey), a panel study sponsored by USAID that collected information from rural households in 1969, 1970, and 1971. A previous wave of REDS took place in 1982.