Sheilagh Ogilvie: observation

Transcript context

…There’s something called the European marriage pattern. You’ve written on this extensively. To what extent did it contribute to later European economic growth? This is a really big debate. My view of it is that the European marriage pattern is observable in a wide range of European countries in central and western and northwestern Europe. Just for our listeners, the European marriage pattern has three key characteristics: relatively late marriage for women, so in their mid to late 20s; a significant proportion of especially women but, of course, also men, never marrying in their entire lives, so lifelong celibacy 10 percent to 15 percent; and primarily nuclear family households. Together, it has been argued that these things were good for subsequent economic growth. That’s mainly based on the fact that England and the Netherlands had the European marriage pattern, and they had amazing economic growth. The Dutch Golden Age was between 1560 and 1670, and then England starts taking off after about 1650 and, of course, becomes the first country to industrialize. People who initially studied the European marriage pattern said, “Oh, this is something that existed in England and the Netherlands. It must have caused economic growth. ” The problem is that the European marriage pattern also existed in extremely poor, stagnant economies in eastern and central Europe, Nordic Europe, Scandinavian countries, places that had serfdom, like Bohemia, the present-day Czech Republic, places in Scandinavia that didn’t industrialize until the late 19th century. Extreme versions of the European marriage pattern were strongly associated with economic stagnation. But all those places do industrialize, even Eastern Europe. After Communism, many decades of terrible policy, they catch up pretty well. Isn’t there something enduring about that culture? Say, if we look at Sahel in Africa, where there’s a lot of polygamy. A woman might be married at age 14, have a lot of kids that won’t be well-educated, doesn’t pass down a lot of human capital to her kids. Doesn’t that continuing regularity show us there really is something to the European marriage pattern?…

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