Dear colleagues,
We hereby invite you to join our next Economics
of Inequality Research Seminar at WU Vienna.
Joanne Haddad
(Université Libre de Bruxelles) will present the paper
Inheritance Customs, the European Marriage Pattern and Female Empowerment.
Date and Time: Monday,
March 24; 3.00 p.m.
Location: WU Vienna, D3 - D3.0.222.
Abstract
Centuries before the demographic transition, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) limited fertility in Western Europe through high celibacy, late age at first marriage, and nuclear household structures. This paper uncovers an institutional
factor that shaped the EMP: inheritance customs. We construct a novel atlas of 200 local inheritance customs in pre-industrial France and Belgium and examine individual-level marriage decisions from genealogical records of 53,672 women born in 1670–1750. We
document two facts about the EMP: a substantial amount of local variation in its prevalence, and a U-shaped relationship between access to inheritance, women’s economic opportunities, and celibacy. This is consistent with inheritance customs affecting marriage
decisions through women’s empowerment and eased financial constraints to form a household. These two channels allow to reconcile conflicting findings on the relationship between the EMP and economic development.
Please register your participation here.
Best regards,
Jan Gromadzki
Jan Gromadzki
he/him
Assistant Professor
Vienna University of Economics and Business
Department of Economics
Research Institute Economics of Inequality INEQ
Building D4 |
2.175