Does the spouse matter in the decision-making power? The direct and indirect effects of an education reform on women’s empowerment in Benin, West Africa

This paper uses the free primary education policy of 2006 in Benin as an exogenous variation to evaluate education's indirect and direct effects on empowerment. The 2006 education reform was one of the largest reforms in Benin in recent years. We used the triple differences taking advantage of variations in program intensity, birth cohorts, and over time. In line with the literature, we find a positive impact of the reform on schooling and learning in the long term and mixed results in the medium term. Nevertheless, our results do not show any significant impact on women’s empowerment. Instead, we find that the FPE 2006 had an indirect positive impact on the choice of spouse and consequently on the empowerment of educated women with educated partners. Furthermore, targeted women with educated partners had a higher probability of partaking in households’ decisions and different opinions about domestic violence following the reform.