Inheritance Customs and the European Marriage Pattern

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 female empowerment or instead financial hardship remains debated. This paper shows that local inheritance institutions determined where economic opportunity strengthened the EMP and where the EMP reflected poverty. We construct a new atlas of 2,486 rural and urban inheritance customs in France and Belgium and combine it with genealogical data on 75,000 women born between 1500 and 1750. We show that the EMP manifested alongside earning opportunities where inheritance included women and younger siblings, but that the EMP reflected economic distress where inheritance was inegalitarian; that effects differed between urban and rural areas; and that they persisted over centuries. We develop and estimate a structural model in which inheritance rules affect marriage decisions through female empowerment and financial constraints. The estimates imply that roughly 65 percent of celibacy reflected choice rather than constraint, suggesting that the EMP was heterogeneous but primarily a positive force for female empowerment.