A Measure of Legal Independence”: The 1870 Married Women's Property Act and the Portfolio Allocations of British Wives

Combs, Mary Beth

doi:10.1017/s0022050705000392

Cited by 42 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In the U.K., from the early thirteenth century until the passage of the 1870 Married Women's Property Act, a woman "on marrying, relinquished her personal property-moveable property such as money, stocks, furniture, and livestock-to her husband's ownership; by law he was permitted to dispose of it at will at any time in the marriage and could even will it away at death" (Combs, 2005(Combs, , p. 1031.…”

Section: Who Can Own and Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

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From Homo-economicus to Homo-virtus: A System-Theoretic Model for Raising Moral Self-Awareness

Friedland

Cole

2017

J Bus Ethics

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There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motive behind free markets, but that markets themselves are representations of our individual and collective moral identities. Building on this understanding, we review the research on how economic incentives crowd-out virtue-oriented concerns. We then introduce the concept of moral self-awareness (MSA); an evolving mindset informed by reflection on moral identity, namely, what one's actions say about oneself given the impacts (positive or negative) on others or society that one's action may effect. MSA comprises three fundamental aspects of virtue-oriented reasoning: pride, shame, and guilt. Finally, we offer a four-stage model anchored in systems theory, yielding ever more refined motivating strategies for maximizing human flourishing and social welfare externalities.2

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Section: Who Can Own and Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A second Act was necessary in 1882 to give married women the right to all property that they owned or were entitled to receive at the time of marriage, and after (Combs, 2005(Combs, , p. 1033. Similar acts were adopted in various states in the U.S. (Speth, 1993).…”

Section: Who Can Own and Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

From Homo-economicus to Homo-virtus: A System-Theoretic Model for Raising Moral Self-Awareness

Friedland

Cole

2017

J Bus Ethics

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“…During the no-education period, fertility is high at close married women's earlier inheritances that had already passed into their husbands' possession. See Holcombe (1983) for the original text of the law, and Combs (2005) for an analysis of its economic effects. 28 The The switch to education takes place in period 4, and is accompanied by an immediate drop in the fertility rate.…”

Section: Then There Exists Aθ Such That In All Periods T Where θ T mentioning

confidence: 99%

Women's Liberation: What's in It for Men?

Doepke¹,

Tertilt²

2008

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The nineteenth century witnessed dramatic improvements in the legal rights of married women. Given that these changes took place long before women gained the right to vote, they amounted to a voluntary renouncement of power by men. In this paper, we investigate men's incentives for sharing power with women. In our model, women's legal rights set the marital bargaining power of husbands and wives. We show that men face a tradeoff between the rights they want for their own wives (namely none) and the rights of other women in the economy. Men prefer other men's wives to have rights because men care about their own daughters and because an expansion of women's rights increases educational investments in children. We show that men may agree to relinquish some of their power once technological change increases the importance of human capital. We corroborate our argument with historical evidence on the expansion of women's rights in England and the United States.

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“…72 72 See Combs, ‘Wives and household wealth’; eadem, ‘Measure of legal independence’; eadem, ‘ Cui Bono ?’. There were no tax advantages to married women holding shares rather than their husbands as, despite the Married Women's Property Acts, the Inland Revenue persisted in taxing the income of married couples rather than of individuals throughout the period.…”

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confidence: 99%

Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain, c. 1870–1935

Rutterford

Green

Maltby

et al. 2011

The Economic History Review

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This article explores the widening ownership of stocks and shares in Great Britain between 1870 and 1935. It demonstrates the extent of that growth and the increasing number of small investors. Women became more important in terms of the number of shareholders and value of holdings. Factors that encouraged this trend included the issue of less risky types of investments, and legal changes relating to married women's property. We examine the 'deepening' importance of stocks and shares for wealth holders, arguing that the growing significance of these kinds of financial assets was as important as the growth in the investor population.e hr_539 157..187 B y 1870, as Jenks noted, England had become a 'stock-and-bondholding aristocracy, measuring income in dividends and wealth in the quotations of the Stock Exchange'. 2 In the remaining decades of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth, a striking change took place in the shareholding population. A growing number of individuals in Britain from a widening social spectrum, including the less affluent, began to own stocks and shares. Gentlemen, solicitors, and peers of the realm were joined by 'retailers, professional men, skilled workers and women'. 3 By the late nineteenth century, as Robb has remarked, 'middle and upper-class Britain truly had become a nation of shareholders'. 4 Buoyed by rising real wealth and enticed by the promise of higher returns and lower risk, individuals with relatively modest amounts of personal wealth began to invest in the stock market. In turn, the ability to tap into these swelling reservoirs of individual savings, eased by the development of the banking system and the spread of provincial stock exchanges, allowed British-registered firms, as well as the UK and foreign governments, to mobilize large amounts of capital from across the country. Indeed, the rise to prominence of these investors underpinned not just the expansion of industry at home but the march of British capital abroad.

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A Measure of Legal Independence”: The 1870 Married Women's Property Act and the Portfolio Allocations of British Wives

Cited by 42 publications

References 25 publications

From Homo-economicus to Homo-virtus: A System-Theoretic Model for Raising Moral Self-Awareness

From Homo-economicus to Homo-virtus: A System-Theoretic Model for Raising Moral Self-Awareness

Women's Liberation: What's in It for Men?

Who comprised the nation of shareholders? Gender and investment in Great Britain, c. 1870–1935

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