Munir Squires (UBC): Industrialization and the Making of an Integrated Society: Evidence from US Marriage Networks
Abstract: This paper shows that industrialization led Americans to form relationships spanning broader social circles, and that this was largely the consequence of weaker incentives to invest in strong family and community ties due to the availability of wage labor. We measure this change using marital distance, a metric that captures whether marriages reinforced existing ties or bridged previously separate social networks. Using data on millions of marriages from 1750-1950, we show that manufacturing employment increased this network distance between spouses. Crucially, we find that the economic incentives offered by impersonal wage employment were central to this transformation. The availability of these jobs to rural workers, independent of any local changes in employment or migration, was the primary driver of increasing marital distance.
Economics
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