Widowhood Strategies in Preindustrial Society

Summary, in English

In preindustrial society, the loss of a spouse usually impelled the surviving party to adapt quickly by choosing between certain strategies: to remain the head of the household, to remarry, to enter a household headed by a child or the spouse of child, to dissolve the household and enter into an unrelated person's household, or to migrate out of the parish. The use of competing-risk hazard models and longitudinal microlevel data shows that demographic, socioeconomic, and gender-related factors interacted in determining the choice of strategy in a rural area of southern Sweden during the nineteenth century.

• Author: Martin Dribe; Christer Lundh; Paul Nystedt
• Department/s: Centre for Economic Demography; Department of Economic History; Department of Health Sciences
• Publishing year: 2007
• Language: English
• Pages: 207-232
• Publication/Series: Journal of Interdisciplinary History
• Volume: 38
• Issue: 2
• Links: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_interdisciplinary_history/v038/38.2dribe.pdf; http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jinh.2007.38.2.207
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Topic: Economic History
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1530-9169