Resource information
This paper examines whether the son
preference and fertility behavior of Muslim couples respond
to the risk of inheritance expropriation by their extended
family. According to traditional Islamic inheritance
principles, only the son of a deceased man can exclude his
male agnates from inheritance and preserve his estate within
the nuclear household. The paper exploits cross-sectional
and time variation in the application of the Islamic
inheritance exclusion rule in Indonesia: between Muslim and
non-Muslim populations affected by different legal systems,
across men with different sibling sex composition, and
before and after a change in Islamic law that allowed female
children to exclude male relatives. The analysis finds that
Muslim couples more affected by the exclusion rule exhibit
stronger son preference, practice sex-differential fertility
stopping, attain a higher proportion of sons, and have
larger families than non-Muslims or Muslims for whom the
exclusion rule is less binding.
