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The introduction sets out the contexts for understanding the early modern French state's decision to intervene proactively in its subjects' reproductive lives. It defines pronatalism, a terms that refers to policies intended that promote both population growth and the extension of the gendered identities associated with procreation and childrearing. The adoption of pronatalist policies in early modern France coincides with some of the earliest statistical evidence for the practice of contraception; both contraception and pronatalism demonstrate the spread of attitudes accepting human intervention to shape fertility. Pronatalist policy also extended the early modern French state's growing interest in regulating the domain of marriage and family.

This chapter offers a social and demographic analysis of the large families who claimed pronatalist tax exemptions in Old Regime France between 1666 and 1760. Samples suggest that recipients were mostly members of urban middling groups including craftsmen and professionals. Demographically, their high fertility was the result of early, long‐lasting marriages and the employment of wetnurses. In social, economic and demographic terms, these families do not seem strikingly different from the French urban households who were beginning to adopt contraceptive practices during the same era. The chapter also reviews contemporary religious sources that not only forbade contraception, but that endowed marriage and prolific reproduction with positive spiritual value. It concludes with a brief study of the strategies some of the large families used to pass on assets and preserve harmony among their numerous progeny.

This chapter argues that the European Marriage Pattern (EMP) played a fundamental role in western Europe’s economic development. The EMP emerged in northwestern Europe in the late medieval period as a result of the Catholic Church’s promotion of marriage based on consensus, the rise of labor markets, and specific institutions concerning property transfers between generations that encouraged wage labor by women. This combination of factors resulted in a demographic regime embedded in a highly commercial environment, in which households interacted frequently with labor, capital, and commodity markets. The authors also discuss possible long-term consequences for human capital formation and institution building, which are elaborated upon in later chapters of the book.

The chapter introduces the theme of the book: pre-industrial marriage in Europe and Asia. The book aims to challenging the rhetoric of an East-West dichotomy in marriage patterns and mechanisms between Asia (China) and Europe (England). In Europe, late marriages, high celibacy rates, preventive checks, individualism – in Asia, early marriages, universal marriage, positive checks, parental authority (e.g. Malthus, Hajnal, Wrigley/Schofield, Macfarlane, Wolf, Skinner). The chapter claims that the East-West binary, based on studies of social norms and aggregate statistics implies a picture that is too simplistic. It argues for the EAP approach to the study of pre-industrial marriage: comparison of local populations in Asia (China, Japan) and Europe (Belgium, Italy, Sweden) for which individual-level longitudinal data are available, using the same models and methods of analysis (presented in chapters 2 and 3).

The chapter summarizes the findings of the comparative and country-specific studies included in the book. In relation to the East-West binary, the EAP findings confirm the previous picture of general differences in marriage pattern and family system. However, when studied at the individual-level, great similarity in human behavior across study populations was found. When comparing ages at first birth instead of age at first marriage, the East-West divide diminishes considerably. Also, some potential determinants of marriage behavior like sex, age, or duration of widowhood influenced marriage chances in the same way, while others like co-resident kin or socioeconomic status indicated similarity in behavior given the differences in family system. In relation to marriage as the prime mechanism of the Malthus model, results give little support. In the European locations there was no marriage response to fluctuation in food prices in the lower socioeconomic status groups, and male marriage candidates from more prosperous families married earlier in all study populations.

In this chapter, the authors take a larger view and explore how different constellations of family organization have affected the position of women in societies across the Eurasian landmass. We discuss the recent contribution to the literature by Dennison and Ogilvie and provide our take on their work. A statistical analysis is conducted to see how significant the relationship between the position of women and economic development is as well as how family organization has affected the position of women. The conclusion is that family arrangements influence the position of women and that the position of women is an important determinant of economic development.

The beguine movement is a most remarkable phenomenon in the history of the Low Countries, but it still remains to be explained. The skewed sex ratio, diminished access to convents, and religious revival of the late Middle Ages seem insufficient to explain the movement in the long run. This chapter argues that the specific attitude toward women in the Low Countries that originated with the emergence of the European Marriage Pattern created a fertile and unique basis for the beguinages to develop: the beguinages may have offered women in the Low Countries safety and security if they chose to remain single.

This chapter explores the main social and economic consequences of plague between the 1340s and the 1390s. In 1400 England was still not at the forefront of European economic development, but it was beginning to close the gap on the leaders. GDP per head, the proportion of people in non-agricultural employment, and the livestock share of agriculture had all increased irreversibly. Dependence upon the market for basic commodities and manufactures had increased, and population and taxable wealth were spread more equitably across the country, reducing the economic divide between the south-east and the rest of the country. Recent arguments that the European Marriage Pattern (EMP)—one of the main institutional characteristics of the Little Divergence—was established in England soon after the Black Death are assessed on the basis of the economic and demographic evidence. Serfdom had declined quickly and significantly, and the implications of the English experience for our understanding of the decline of European serfdom are explored. The main institutional changes in factor markets in general, and the spread of contractual arrangements in particular, are considered. By 1400 the main changes had worked their way through the economy, and further significant developments did not occur until population began to rise again in the sixteenth century.

This chapter introduces the concept of female agency and sets up the framework for the rest of the book. The authors explain how age at marriage can be an indicator of the degree of power a woman has in a relationship, as well as her role in society. This chapter argues that the European Marriage Pattern (free choice of marriage partner) played a fundamental role in the economic development of Western Europe, leading to the Industrial Revolution and a higher standard of living. The authors explore the contemporary situation, presenting correlations between marriage age and composite measures of gender equality, as well as zooming out to the global level to discuss differences in how women have fared in terms of human capital formation, access to the capital market, and participation in the labor market.