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A Measure of Legal Independence”: The 1870 Married Women's Property Act and the Portfolio Allocations of British Wives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2005

MARY BETH COMBS
MARY BETH COMBS
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Dealy Hall 523, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458. E-mail: mcombs@fordham.edu.
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Abstract

I examine the portfolio allocations of women married in the years surrounding the 1870 Married Women's Property Act. The act, which gave women married after 1870 the right to own and control personal property, serves as a natural experiment to examine the extent to which individuals respond to changes in property law. I link wealth data to census information and find that, as a result of the act, women married after 1870 altered their portfolio allocations by shifting wealth-holding away from real property to personal property. The results indicate that the act greatly impacted the investment decisions of women.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , December 2005 , pp. 1028 - 1057
Copyright
© 2005 The Economic History Association

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