Abstract
ABSTRACTRecent years have witnessed a growing interest in the role of the historical family as the instigator of disparate developmental trajectories. However, a major challenge faced by these studies was that they had to work around a lack of reliable historical data. This study demonstrates how embarking on the recent outburst of historical microdata infrastructures may help to improve these explorations by suggesting additional statistics and a derived measure (the Patriarchy Index) that might prove useful in future efforts aimed at assessing the effect of historical family organization on comparative development. The added value of that endeavour is assessed by comparing the predictive validity of the PI for contemporary developmental gradients against a composite indicator of family organization previously used by economic historians (Carmichael’s ‘Female Friendliness Index’). The results indicate that conclusions about the relationship between historical family organization and various societal outcomes may be sensitive to the measure used. Based on the evidence presented in this paper, it is argued that one of the reasons why the potential importance of historical family for contemporary developmental disparities has not been convincingly unravelled could be inadequacy of data and indicators so far employed to assess historical family formations. To the extent that the Patriarchy Index would be taken up by wider scholarly circles as an indicator of historical family organization it could help unravel potentially new associations between past and present, at least as far as Europe is concerned.
Highlights
The vast bulk of historical demographic literature has viewed the family as a relatively passive unit affected by exogenous changes in standards of living, environmental vicissitudes, or political-economic upheavals (Szołtysek, 2014)
Given that indexing historical patriarchy may be difficult for non-European societies, we separately evaluate the Female Friendliness Index (FFI) as a global rather than European measure of family relations
When correlations are based on the largest number of countries from different continents, the FFI yields relatively large effects and may explain up to 40% of the variance
Summary
The vast bulk of historical demographic literature has viewed the family as a relatively passive unit affected by exogenous changes in standards of living, environmental vicissitudes, or political-economic upheavals (Szołtysek, 2014). In a recent series of papers, Alesina and Giuliano (2010, 2014) have shown that the strength of family values across the world is negatively associated with a wide range of societal attitudes related to productivity and growth, as well as political participation, levels of trust and attitudes towards gender hierarchies (earlier, Bertrand & Schoar, 2006; Kick, Davis, Lehtinen, & Wang, 2000; Daniele & Geys, 2016).1 Inspired by these insights, as well as by a growing recognition that human development can be affected by persistent historical traits (Nunn, 2009; Spolaore & Wacziarg, 2013), an increasing number of economic history works has incorporated past familial behaviour into explanations of developmental divergences within Europe and beyond
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