Family organisation and human capital inequalities in historic Europe: testing the association anew

Abstract

There has been growing interest in the question of whether variation in family systems is a factor in the disparities in growth, development, and human capital formation. Studies by proponents of the field of New Institutional Economics have suggested that differences in family organisation could have considerable influence on regional developmental inequalities in today's world, while a number of economic historians have argued that certain systems of marriage and household structure in the European past might have been more conducive than others to economic growth. Despite recent criticism of these ideas by Dennison and Ogilvie, who argued that the family has no exogenous effects on growth, the debate over this potential relationship continues. However, we believe that this discussion has been suffering from a lack of historical data that would give a fuller picture of the rich diversity of family settings, and from methodological shortcomings that have so far hindered the proper operationalisation of historical family systems and their potential effects on developmental outcomes. In this paper, we apply a recently developed multidimensional measure of historic familial organisation, the Patriarchy Index; and use spatially sensitive multivariate analyses to investigate its relationship with human capital levels, as approximated by numeracy across 115 populations of historic Europe. We find a strong negative association between the Patriarchy Index and regional numeracy patterns that remains significant even after controlling for a broad range of other important factors. Our observation that family-driven age-and gender-related inequalities, as captured by the index, are relevant for understanding variation in basic numeracy patterns in the past suggests that there are indeed important links between family organisation and human capital accumulation that merit further investigation.

Historical family systems and contemporary developmental outcomes: what is to be gained from the historical census microdata revolution?

“…1 Inspired by these insights, as well as by a growing recognition that human development can be affected by persistent historical traits (Nunn, 2009;Spolaore & Wacziarg, 2013), an increasing number of economic history works has incorporated past familial behaviour into explanations of developmental divergences within Europe and beyond (e.g. Greif, 2006;Duranton, Rodríguez-Pose, & Sandall, 2009;De Moor & Van Zanden, 2010;Foreman-Peck, 2011;Dennison & Ogilvie, 2014Bertocchi & Bozzano, 2015;Carmichael et al, 2016a;Rijpma & Carmichael, 2016;Carmichael & Rijpma, 2017;Dilli, 2017;Le Bris, 2016;Szołtysek, Poniat, Klüsener, & Gruber, 2017a;Santos Silva, Alexander, Klasen, & Welzel, 2017; earlier also Reher, 1998;Therborn, 2004). Given the sheer complexity of the problem at stake, it is not surprising that this new emerging literature has already provoked a considerable amount of controversy, involving debates on the precise underlying mechanisms, the role of non-familial institutions and the possibility of reversed causality (Dennison & Ogilvie, 2014Carmichael, De Pleijt, Van Zanden, & De Moor, 2016b).…”

Historical family systems and lasting developmental trajectories in Europe: the power of the family?

“…Inspired by these insights, as well as by a growing recognition that human development can be affected by persistent historical traits (Nunn, 2009;Spolaore & Wacziarg, 2013), an increasing number of economic history works has incorporated past familial behaviour into explanations of developmental divergences within Europe and beyond (e.g. Greif, 2006;Duranton et al, 2009;De Moor & Van Zanden, 2010;Foreman-Peck, 2011;Dennison & Ogilvie, 2014Bertocchi & Bozzano, 2015;Carmichael et al, 2016a;Rijpma & Carmichael, 2016;Carmichael & Rijpma, 2017;Dilli, 2017;Le Bris, 2016;Szołtysek et al, 2017a;Santos Silva et al, 2017; earlier also Reher, 1998;Therborn, 2004).…”

“…Over the past few years historical family organization has become the object of extensive research in economics and cross-cultural studies as part of a broader agenda on the impact of culture on economic performance and comparative development (e.g., Greif, 2006;Duranton et al, 2009;De Moor & Van Zanden, 2010;Foreman-Peck, 2011;Carmichael et al, 2016a;Rijpma & Carmichael, 2016;Carmichael & Rijpma, 2017;Dennison & Ogilvie, 2014Dilli, 2017;Le Bris, 2016;Szołtysek et al, 2017a;Santos Silva et al, 2017;Bertocchi & Bozzano, 2015;also Alexander & Welzel, 2015). This new emerging literature has already provoked a considerable amount of controversy, involving debates on the precise underlying mechanisms, the role of non-familial institutions and the possibility of reversed causality (Dennison & Ogilvie 2014Carmichael et al, 2015;Carmichael et al,.…”

“…2016b;Baten et al,. 2016;Bertocchi & Bozzano 2016;Edwards & Ogilvie, 2018;Szołtysek et al, 2017a). A further recurring problem encountered in all previous studies was finding historical demographic data that would be at the same time detailed and global to empirically anchor the authors' arguments (Szołtysek & Poniat 2018, 3-4).…”