Does the European Marriage Pattern Explain Economic Growth?

Abstract

This article scrutinizes the recently postulated link between the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) and economic success. Multivariate analysis of 4,705 demographic observations, covering women's marriage age, female lifetime celibacy, and household complexity in 39 European countries, shows that the most extreme manifestations of the EMP were associated with economic stagnation rather than growth. There is no evidence that the EMP improved economic performance by empowering women, increasing human capital investment, adjusting population to economic trends, or sustaining beneficial cultural norms. European economic success was not caused by the EMP and its sources must therefore be sought in other factors.istorical demography has attracted much attention in recent years, as economists have begun to incorporate demographic behavior into theories of long-run growth. Several recent contributions to this literature focus on household formation patterns, arguing that the explanation for western economic success was the European

Plague and Lethal Epidemics in the Pre-Industrial World

“…More generally, they argue the Black Death favored the establishment of the considered a potential cause of long-term economic divergence. These arguments, in turn, have been challenged (Dennison and Ogilvie 2014) and triggered an active debate…”

Land Inequality, Education, and Marriage: Empirical Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Prussia

“…In his model, later marriage raised the level of education of women as they had more time to acquire human capital before child bearing and rearing which in turn translated into higher income levels. Based on a review of the historical demography literature, Dennison and Ogilvie (2014) argue that there is no evidence of a relationship between the characteristics of the European Marriage Pattern and economic growth.…”

Family, demography and labour relations

“…Although recently a debate about such a causality has arisen with regard to the impact of the European marriage pattern on wage labour relations, gender, and long-run economic growth (Carmichael, de Pleijt, van Zanden, & De Moor, 2016;Dennison & Ogilvie, 2014de Moor & van Zanden, 2010), this debate has predominantly focused on the pre-industrial period, and on Europe. Therefore, in order to explore the effects of family formation and demographic change on labour relations in a global framework, connecting pre-industrial and industrial societies, a workshop was organized at the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) in December 2014.…”