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This study investigates the historical patterns and determinants of marrying someone from the same social status background in Hungary from the second half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. We focus on the classic question of how modernization influences homogamy, but we also address a problem studied less frequently: How does religious diversity in society relate to status homogamy? Utilizing data from a large sample of church marriage registers for present-day Hungary, we find a steady decline in the association between a bridegroom's parental social status and his bride's social background, and an initial increase and subsequent decline in the association between a bridegroom's own status and a bride's status of origin. More industrial social contexts are characterized by less parental status homogamy; however, greater educational opportunity is associated with more homogamy by bridegroom's own status. We find a decline in same-status preferences over time and in more industrialized contexts in early modernizing Hungary, but also a short period of increasing meritocracy in marriage partner selection, which is likely to have been related to educational expansion. We find, too, lower social status homogamy in smaller religious groups, suggesting the importance of locally and historically variable opportunity structures in marital choices.

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The paper tries to examine the intensity and possible influencing factors of remarriages in two distant communities of historic Hungary during the 19th century. It uses longitudinal data gained from parish registers and family reconstitution method and event history models for the analysis of remarriage. Having only incomplete information on the social status of widowed persons, we used sex, age at widowhood, period, duration of widowhood and family composition as independent variables in the models. The analysis could prove that there were considerable differences within the 'Eastern marriage pattern': the analysed Transylvanian community showed a higher propensity to remarry than the West Hungarian one. This result fits well into the differing demographic patterns of the two communities. The most probable causes of these differences were better mortality and differing social composition in the Hungarian village. High propensity to remarry and the high proportion of widower/widow marriages stress the unique character of the Transylvanian community. Otherwise the role of sex was decisive in remarriage, that of age and duration of widowhood were also considerable, while period effect could not be observed. The presence of working-age sons decreased the relative risk of remarriage significantly. In this respect there were no considerable differences between the studied communities, and the results are similar to those of other research.

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