Testing Todd and Matching Murdock: Global Data on Historical Family Characteristics

Abstract

This paper investigates the possibilities for the creation of a global dataset on family and household characteristics. This is done by scrutinizing and comparing two prominent data sources on family system classifications. We first focus on historical data, by comparing Emmanuel Todd's classification of countries by family systems with ethnographic data compiled in George Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas. Qualitative and quantitative tests show that the two datasets frequently agree about family traits. Nonetheless, substantial differences exist that are mostly attributable to the focus of the datasets on different regions, and the difficulties in translating local, descriptive studies to hard data. We therefore emphasize that it is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of the two datasets and emphasize that robustness checks are necessary in empirical research into family characteristics. We also compare these historical data with present-day data. This comparison suggests that family characteristics and the values associated with them can persist over long periods. Auke Rijpma, Utrecht University, Drift 6, 3512BK Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email: a.rijpma@uu.nl Sarah G. Carmichael, Utrecht University, Drift 6, 3512BK Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email: s.g. carmichael@uu.nl We would like to thank Tine De Moor, Jan Kok and Jan Luiten van Zanden for their comments on previous versions of this paper. Additionally we are grateful to Jaco Zuijderduijn, Bastian Mönke-diek, Pim de Zwart, Paul Rotering, Benjamin Guilbert, Christiaan van Bochove, Oscar Gelderblom, Maarten Prak, Selin Dilli, Lotte van der Vleuten, and Kati Buzási for their comments during workshops in April and June 2012. We also thank participants at the WEHC 2012 session 'Marriage patterns, agency in households, and economic growth' and three anonymous referees. Last but not least we thank Jutta Bolt for the underlying data, her patience, and always responding to our numerous email questions.10

Blood is Thicker Than Water

“…11.For example, this was the cause behind a discrepancy between the observations about the Russians in Murdock and our test data (Dunn & Dunn, 1967; Rijpma & Carmichael, 2016). …”

“…It highlights three important lacunas. First, there is Europe for which coverage in the Ethnographic Atlas is poor (Rijpma & Carmichael, 2016). Australia and the western part of Latin America are also frequently unmatched.…”

“…In other work, we have addressed how the position of women within family systems affects current day outcomes (Carmichael, Dilli, & Rijpma, 2014; Dilli, Rijpma, & Carmichael, 2015; Rijpma & Carmichael, 2016), and this is generally also the focus of the interest in culture from the New Institutional Economics (Alesina & Giuliano, 2015). However, an important question remains: Why do certain family organization arrangements occur in one region but not another?…”

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).…”

Introducing the Historical Gender Equality Index

“…The difference between the two estimates is largely driven by the changes in parliamentary activity. 14 However, see Carmichael, Dilli, and Rijpma (2014) for women's inheritance rights in the years 1920, 1950, and 2000 based on George P. Murdock (1967); Mary HallwardDriemeier, Tazeen Hasan, and Anca Bogdana Rusu (2013); and Auke Rijpma and Sarah G. Carmichael (2016). 15 Carmichael, Dilli, and Rijpma (2014) provide a detailed description of the historical evolution of gender equality.…”