Inheritance Practices in the Rural German Empire and Its Influence

Inheritance Practices in the Rural German Empire and Its Influence

Inheritance Practices
in the Rural German Empire and Their Influence on
Historical Economic and Social Outcomes
- work in progress -
Natalie Obergrubera
Joint with Simon Jägerb and Johannes Eignerc
EHES 2015
Pisa, September 2015
a) Ifo Institute. E-mail: [email protected]
b) Harvard University and IZA, E-mail: [email protected]
c) University of Edinburgh. E-mail: [email protected]
Definition & Motivation
Impartible
One heir for
whole farm
Partible
Definition
Equal splitting of
property among siblings
Continuum
• Inheritance practice – institution/culture –
influences:
– Individual property (land)
– Occupations (farmer or not)
– Urbanization (migration, jobs in cities)
→ influence on structural change
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Natalie Obergruber - EHES 2015
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Literature I
• Impartible inheritance – higher inequality
(Stiglitz (1969); Menchik (1980); Chu (1991))
• Theoretical evidence – distribution of wealth
influences occupational choice
(Galor & Zeira (1993), Banerjee et al. (2005), Ghatak & NienHuei Jiang (2002), and Galor & Moav (2004))
• Industrialization of Germany – different
patterns – decentralized first phase
(Herrigel ( 2000))
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Literature II
• Large non-economic literature on influences of
inheritance practices (e.g. Oltmer (2010); Herrigel (2000);
Becker (1998); Cole and Wolf (1995))
• Economic literature
– Alston & Schapiro (1984): US, population growth
– Tur Prats (2014): Spain, family type
– As control for Germany: e.g. Cantoni (2015),
Cinnirella and Hornung (2013)
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Research Questions
• How were different inheritance practices
spread over the German Empire?
• How did different inheritance practices
influence structural change?
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Inheritance Practices
in the German Empire ~1900
Impartible
Inheritance practice
Mild form Impartible
inh. practice
Partible inheritance
practice
September 2015
Mild form partible
inh. practice
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Outcomes
Avgerage Farmsize 1895
10.84-17.91 ha
8.05-10.83 ha
3.3-5.55 ha
5.56-8.04 ha
0-3.29 ha
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Outcomes
Distribution of Farm Sizes - Impartible
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Outcomes
Distribution of Farm Sizes - Partible
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Outcomes
Secondary Employment 1895
Red… high percentage
Green… low percentage
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Outcomes
Industrial Employment 1895
Red… high percentage
Green… low percentage
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Controls
• Soil quality
–
–
–
–
Sub soil parent material (majority material) (ESDB)
Sub soil mineralogy (majority mineral) (ESDB)
Ruggedness
Agricultural Suitability
• General regional law
– e.g. Prussian Landrecht, Code Civil, etc.
• Percentage of Catholics
• Longitude and latitude
• Dummy: having been under French rule (Acemoglu et
al. (2011))
• Dummy: Ruhr area (Rouette (2003))
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Conclusion from Empirical Analysis
• Partible inheritance counties
→ smaller farms (people complied to local
inheritance practice)
→ higher shares of secondary employment
(but not a lot higher)
• No effect on industrial main employment so
far (measure too crude)
• Raw correlation: Higher urbanization rates
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Natalie Obergruber - EHES 2015
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