Essays on marital sorting and fertility
Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis examines the interactions between marital patterns, inequality, and fertility. In the first chapter I analyze the impact of search frictions on marital assortative matching. I exploit a temporary interruption of the “London Season” — a central marriage market where the nineteenth-century British aristocracy courted. I find that the reduction of search frictions associated with this institution explains between 70 and 80 percent of sorting in social status and land-holdings, generating a huge concentration of landed wealth. In the second chapter I examine the relationship between land inequality and the introduction of public education in late-Victorian England and Wales. I show that counties where landownership was more concentrated systematically under-invested in public schooling. In the final chapter I estimate the effects of cousin marriage on fertility in the British peerage. I find that consanguinity initially increases the number of births, but constraints reproductive success in the long-run.
Author: Marc Goñi i Tràfach
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2512730417