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

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. In this study we review the literature on the relationship between landownership inequality and the accumulation of human capital in historical perspective. Furthermore we provide new evidence on the relationship between landownership inequality and marriage patterns at the county level in nineteenth-century Prussia. Formally the landed elite could have inuenced not only the labor relations with the peasants but also their marriage decisions. Using cross-sectional as well as panel analysis we find no evidence that noble landowners directly affected marriage rates. Instead we find a robust negative association between average formal education and the share of married women. This finding is in line with recent theoretical and empirical literature on the role of gender specific human capital in the demographic transition. Terms of use: Documents inJEL-Codes: O430, Q150, I250, J120, N330.

Prussia disaggregated: the demography of its universe of localities in 1871

“…With our data at the highly disaggregated level of more than 50,000 localities, one can shed more light on different demographic patterns in rural areas in eastern and western Prussian territories. Relatedly, Cinnirella and Hornung (2017) document the relationship between the power of landed elites and marriage patterns. They find no systematic evidence in favor of the hypothesis that noble landowners directly interfered with marriage decisions.…”

“…The literacy rate in Italy at the time of unification in 1861 was only 27% and around 35% in 1871; the literacy rate in Spain was around 30% by 1870 [Cipolla (1969)]. In fact, the average literacy rate in Prussian manors in 1871 was much higher than in large Spanish cities such as Barcelona (0.50), Madrid (0.66), or Valencia (0.40) three decades later, in 1900 [Cinnirella et al (2020)]. Compared to Italy, the literacy level in the Prussian manors was considerably higher than the literacy rate of Turin (0.58), the city with the highest level of literacy in 1871 Italy [Federico et al (2019)].…”