India's Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 — Equal Coparcenary Rights for Daughters

The Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005 rewrote Section 6 of India's Hindu Succession Act, 1956, making daughters coparceners "by birth" in ancestral joint-family property on equal footing with sons, following five states that had already amended their own succession rules between 1976 and 1994.

Deininger, Goyal and Nagarajan (2013), using the 2006 Rural Economic and Demographic Survey (8,190 households), found daughters whose father died after the reform were 15 percentage points more likely to inherit land (23.5 points for deaths six or more years post-reform), with girls' schooling rising about 0.37 years and marriage age rising 0.54 years. Roy (2015), using three rounds of the National Family Health Survey, found the youngest treated cohort gained 1.72 additional years of education and saw dowry payments fall by about 10,272 Rupees, with no effect detected among a Muslim/Christian placebo group. A World Bank study (Mookerjee 2017) found the reform raised women's say in healthcare decisions by 2.6 points and in major purchases by up to 3.3 points, alongside a 4.3-point fall in co-residence with in-laws.

Bhalotra, Brulé and Roy (2020), analysing roughly 305,741 second-order births, found the reform was followed by a 3.8-4.3 percentage-point reduction in the likelihood second children were girls and a 2.3-3.2 point rise in infant mortality, indicating sex-selective abortion and neglect. Despite the Supreme Court's 2020 confirmation that the right applies by birth, India's 2019-21 NFHS found only 31.7% of women own land versus 43.9% of men, up only slowly from 28.3% in 2015-16, and a Landesa/UN Women survey found only 22% of surveyed families were aware the law existed.