Status Homogamy in the Preindustrial Marriage Market: Partner Selection According to Age,Social Origin,and Place of Birth in Nineteenth-century Rural Sweden
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online October, 2009
Status Homogamy in the Preindustrial Marriage Market: Partner Selection According to Age,Social Origin,and Place of Birth in Nineteenth-century Rural Sweden
This article studies partner selection according to three dimensions: social origin, age, and place of birth. The authors use micro-level data from local population registers in five parishes in southern Sweden from 1815 to 1895.The results confirm that all three aspects were important but that socioeconomic status was the most important characteristic,structuring much of the selection process.The importance of social and age homogamy remained stable over the period, while geographic exogamy became more frequent, which could be interpreted in terms of an increasing openness of rural society.The authors also find some indications of exchange of characteristics in the partner selection process.
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Martin Dribe and Christer Lundh, "Finding the Right Partner: Rural Homogamy in Nineteenth-century Sweden," International Review of Social History50, suppl. (2005): 149-77.
22.
See, e.g., van Leeuwen and Maas, "Partner Choice and Homogamy." For a different view, see Beekink, Liefbroer, and van Poppel, "Changes in Choice of Spouse."
23.
Mare, "Five Decades"; Smits, Ultee, and Lammers, "Educational Homogamy in 65 Countries." For evidence for Sweden, see Ursula Henz and Jan O. Jonsson, "Who Marries Whom in Sweden?" in Who Marries Whom? Educational Systems as Marriage Markets in Modern Societies, ed. H.-P. Blossfeld and A. Timm (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 2003), 235-66.
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Martin Dribe and Christer Lundh, "Gender Aspects of Inheritance Strategies and Land Transmission in Rural Scania, Sweden, 1720-1840," History of the Family10, no. 3 (2005): 293-308; Dribe and Lundh, "Retirement as a Strategy."
31.
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33.
The Scanian Demographic Database is maintained by the Centre for Economic Demography, Lund University, Sweden (http://www.ed.lu.se).
34.
See Martin Dribe , Leaving Home in a Peasant Society.Economic Fluctuations, Household Dynamics and Youth Migration in Southern Sweden, 1829-1866 (Södertälje, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2000).
35.
Statistics Sweden , Befolkningsutvecklingen under 250 år ( Stockholm: SCB, 1999), 42.
36.
Tommy Bengtsson and Christer Lundh, "Evaluation of a Swedish Computer Program for Automatic Family Reconstitution," Lund Papers in Economic History8 (1991): 1-43.
37.
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38.
Dribe, Leaving Home; Martin Dribe, "Migration of Rural Families in Nineteenth Century Southern Sweden: A Longitudinal Analysis of Local Migration Patterns," History of the Family 8, no. 2 (2003): 247-65; Martin Dribe and Christer Lundh, "People on the Move. Determinants of Servant Migration in Nineteenth Century Sweden," Continuity and Change 20, no 1. (2005): 53-91.
39.
See Dribe, Leaving Home, chap. 2.
40.
We have used one-sixteenth mantal (a rough measure of the productive potential of the farm) as the limit of subsistence, which is also the way the contemporary society defined it. For a discussion, see Dribe, Leaving Home, chap. 2.
41.
See, e.g., Carl-Johan Gadd, Den agrara revolutionen 1700-1870 ( Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2000 ), 76, 198-202.
42.
E.g., ibid., 76-78, 86.
43.
Mats Olsson, Storgodsdrift. Godsekonomi och arbetsorganisation i Skåne från dansk tid till mitten av 1800-talet (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2002).
44.
see Dribe, Leaving Home, 19.
45.
Dribe and Lundh, "Finding the Right Partner"
46.
Kalmijn, "Intermarriage and Homogamy"
47.
Dribe and Lundh, "Finding the Right Partner"
48.
See Eva Wigström, Allmogeseder i Rönnebergs härad på 1840-talet (Malmö, Sweden: Gidlunds, 1891/1985).
49.
Dribe and Lundh, "Finding the Right Partner"
50.
See, e.g., Qian, "Changes in Assortative Mating"; van Poppel et al., "Love, Necessity and Opportunity."
