CUI BONO? THE 1870 BRITISH MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY ACT, BARGAINING POWER, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES WITHIN MARRIAGE

Abstract

The 1870 Married Women's Property Act created major change in nineteenth-century British property law. Until the passage of the Act, a husband had legal ownership over his wife's personal property and managerial rights over her real property. The Act granted British women the right to own and control personal property and therefore serves as a natural experiment to test the impact of a legislative change on the distribution of household resources. The article examines whether the Act enabled women to gain a larger share of household resources and alter the distribution of resources within the household. The results indicate that the rights granted to women by the Act dramatically increased the bargaining power and property of wives: wives married after the Act owned a larger share of total household property and invested less of their own income and more of their husband's in forms of property they owned and controlled.