Economy,Family,and Remarriage: Theory of Remarriage and Application to Preindustrial England 1

Abstract

THIS article applies the emerging economic theory of remarriage to data on remarriage after widowhood in preindustrial Western society and examines the implications of these data both for the theory of remarriage and for the understanding of remarriage processes in modern American society. The first section briefly reviews the theory of remarriage, based largely on U.S. data, and specifies some of the assumptions implicit in theory. This is followed by a discussion of the social and economic conditions for the area studied in this article, which examine the structural and economic similarities and differences relevant to the study of remarriage. Data analyses and findings are presented in the third section, followed by discussion of the findings, and a concluding section that discusses the relevance for studies of remarriage in the modern period and the needs for further research.

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