General Seminar - Akwasi Ampofo

When Custom Becomes Law: Decentralized Divorce Regimes and Well-being

In many developing countries, top-down family law reforms generate limited welfare gains for women. This paper demonstrates that divorce rights successfully empower women when the state legitimizes culturally embedded practices. Exploiting a spatial regression discontinuity design at the Mauritania-Mali-Senegal borders, I compare women from the exact same pre-colonial ethnic homelands. I find that women living under decentralized legal regime have depression scores 0.31-0.71 SD lower than their counterparts, a 20-48% reduction. They are also less likely to experience intimate partner violence. Further analysis reveals these gains operate through increased intra-household bargaining power and trust in decentralized community networks.