title: Marriage Timing over the Generations.
abstract: Strong relationships have been hypothesized between the timing of marriage and the familial environment of the couple. Sociologists have identified various mechanisms via which the age at marriage in the parental generation might be related to the age at marriage of the children. In our paper we study this relationship for historical populations. We use a dataset consisting of several hundreds of thousands of marriages contracted in three of the 11 Dutch provinces between 1812 and 1922. We identified the generational links between the brides, grooms, their parents, and grandparents. We studied (a) whether there is a relationship between ages at marriage of (grandfathers) fathers and sons, and ages at marriage of (grandmothers) mothers and daughters and (b) whether this relationship might be explained by social class. We find evidence for a clear effect of the family on age at marriage and substantial intergenerational transmission. The impact that the family of origin has on age at entry into marriage can partly be attributed to social class. We also observed positive effects of grandparents' age at marriage on their offspring's age at marriage.
authors.affiliation: Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, P.O. Box 11650, 2502 AR, The Hague, The Netherlands. poppel@nidi.nl.
authors.forename: Frans
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: van Poppel
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Cultural Sciences, Tilburg University, Room S 181, P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE, Tilburg, The Netherlands. C.W.S.Monden@uvt.nl.
authors.forename: Christiaan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Monden
authors.affiliation: International Institute of Social History, University of Amsterdam, Cruquiusweg 31, 1019 AT, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. kma@iisg.nl.
authors.forename: Kees
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mandemakers
keywords: Age at marriage; Familial effects; Intergenerational transmission; Multilevel models; Netherlands; Social class