This article examines the adoption practices of South-Tama
peasants in late nineteenth-century Japan on the basis of an 1870 household
register (2,057 households). We find that the institution of adoption was the
major heirship strategy for these households. The probability of adoption varied
by the differential number of surviving siblings, and by economic status, thereby
creating social mobility among them. Adoption was an important way to
redistribute sons, benefitting households with and without sons and preventing
household extinction.
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