Abstract: This paper argues that love, as opposed to arranged, marriage promotes growth. Men pay for marriage. However, an important dierence between love and arrange marriage is who makes and receives the payment. Under love marriage, typically the groom pays his wife, while under arranged marriage, the groom (or his father) pays the bride’s father. Clearly, love marriage directs resources from the father of the bride to the bride. Moreover, love marriage may redistribute resources from the father to the son. If young (v. old) and women (v. men) are more prone to save or invest in the human capital of children, then love marriage promotes physical or human capital accumulation. We propose that the adoption and adherence to love marriage in Europe, starting in the 7th century at the instigation of the Church, may be one reason why Europe surged ahead of other advanced pre-industrial societies, notably India and China, around A.D. 1500. “Europe was lucky, but luck is only a beginning. Anyone who looked at the world, say a thousand years ago, would never have predicted great things for this protrusion at the western end of the Eurasian landmass that we call the continent of Europe. In terms popular among today’s new economic historians, the probability at that point of European global dominance was somewhere around zero. Five hundred years later, it was getting close to one.” Landes [1999]:29.
Publication Year: 2002
Publication Date: 2002-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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