Inheritance Customs and the European Marriage Pattern

Matthew Curtis, Paula Gobbi, Marc Goñi and Joanne Haddad

No 26275, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin)

Abstract: Centuries before the demographic transition, the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) limited fertility in Western Europe through high celibacy, late marriage, and nuclear households. Whether the EMP reflected economic distress or female empowerment remains debated. This paper shows that local inheritance institutions determined which of these interpretations prevails. To do so, we develop a model of marriage, inheritance, and local labor endowments and estimate it using genealogical data on 75,000 women born in 1500-1750, combined with a new atlas of 2,486 rural and urban inheritance customs in France and Belgium. We document four new facts that we use to estimate the deep parameters of the model: (i) egalitarian inheritance - which included women and younger children - weakened the EMP in rural areas; (ii) but strengthen it in urban areas; (iii) earning opportunities are positively associated to the EMP where inheritance was egalitarian, but negatively where inheritance was inegalitarian; and (iv) these patterns persisted throughout the early-modern period. We use the model's estimates to decompose the share of EMP reflecting women's choices versus economic constraint. We show that 65 percent of celibacy reflected choice, that this varies across space, and that it is strongly associated to women's local inheritance rights. Our findings call for rethinking Hajnal (1965)'s canonical characterization of the EMP along a new dimension: whether celibacy was empowered or constrained.

Keywords: European Marriage Pattern; Celibacy; Customs; Inheritance. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 J10 K11 N33 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-10
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