Wiederverheiratung war im vorindustriellen Schweden weit verbreitet, besonders unter Männern, auch wenn im Laufe des 19. Jahrhunderts die Zahl der Wiederverheiratungen zurückging. Dieser Aufsatz analysiert Wiederverheiratungen im südlichen Schweden zwischen 1766 und 1894. Die Daten stammen aus Familienrekonstitutionen für fünf ländliche Gemeinden im südlichen Schweden, die es ermöglichen, einzelne Witwen und Witwer vom Todesjahr des Ehepartners an zu verfolgen. Besonderes Augenmerk gilt der Frage nach dem Einfluss bestimmter Merkmale wie der Zusammensetzung des Hauhalts, der Nahrungsmittelpreise und des historischen Zeitpunkts auf die Wahrscheinlichkeit der Wiederverheiratung einer Witwe oder eines Witwers. Für einige Variablen war der Effekt ziemlich klar. So hatte z.B. das Alter der oder des Betroffenen einen negativen Effekt auf die Wiederverheiratung, und die Wahrscheinlichkeit zur Wiederverheiratung nahm im 19. Jahrhundert generell ab. Der Einfluss anderer Variablen dagegen war nicht so eindeutig. Der sozialökonomische Status korrespondierte mit allen Variablen, insbesondere mit dem Geschlecht, den Nahrungsmittelpreise und der Präsenz minderjähriger oder erwachsener Kinder im Haushalt.

Remarriage was common in Sweden in pre-industrial times, especially among men, although over the nineteenth century the number of remarriages declined. This article analyses remarriages in southern Sweden between 1766 and 1894. Data are derived from family reconstitutions in five rural parishes in southern Sweden, which makes it possible to follow individual widows and widowers from the year of the death of the spouse. The focus here is on the influence of individual characteristics, household composition, food prices and time period on an individual widow's or widower's probability of remarriage. For some variables the effect was quite general, for example the negative effect on remarriage of the individual's age and the decrease in the likelihood of remarriage in the nineteenth century. The influence of other variables was not this straightforward. Socioeconomic status interacted with all variables, especially gender, food prices and the presence of minor or adult children in the household.

The article explores the roles of household compositional factors and socio-economic status on widowhood and remarriage. By using micro-level data from a nineteenth-century Italian community for the period 1819–1859, we found evidence of the very predominant role of household structure in the decision to remarry for both widows and widowers. In particular, the interplay between the presence of a supportive family network and the presence of coresiding children from previous marriages stood out as the key factors. The presence of children aged 12 and under promoted the search for a new bride for widowers, whilst the presence of children of any age, especially young ones, decreased the chances of remarriage for widows.

Drawing data from the local population registers in two northeastern Japanese agricultural villages in the period 1716–1870, this study examines the patterns and covariates of remarriage in a rural community with strong adherence to a stem family organization. Event history analysis is applied separately for males and females, and for two types of previous marriage (uxorilocal and virilocal). Controlling for demographic and economic factors, coresiding parents and children had differential impacts on remarriage for these subgroups. Men and women were tightly bound to the fates of their natal and marital households within the larger context of local economic conditions.

This article examines the development of formal poor-relief provision across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in rural Germany, through a case study of a district of the Duchy of Württemberg. It presents a detailed picture of practices to support the poor, whether through payments and alms from the poor chest, institutions providing credit, common rights or village and town granaries. In building up a picture of institutional practice, it also presents extensive information on the recipients of relief. It is argued that both the institutional framework and new trends in its development during the period ante-dated the Reformation, and that this society enjoyed a wide and varied capacity to support the poor that bears comparison with the English Old Poor Law. However, in a differing socio-economic context, demand for support remained more limited, and the demographic catastrophe of the Thirty Years' War arrested trends towards increasingly formalized collections, pensions and doles.

The study documents fluctuations of proto-industrial income, of occupation, debt and presence on land markets across the life course for rural households in a major proto-industrial region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These fluctuations are interpreted on the basis that a major objective of households is to equalize their income across different stages of their development. The permanent income hypothesis is then extended to take into account land purchases and debt-contracting that result from the need to adjust land and capital to fluctuations in the size of the family labour force across the family cycle and from endeavours to improve the family's welfare by increasing the labour to land ratio. The empirical material presented shows marked fluctuations of income from proto-industrial work across the life course and suggests the existence of permanent income-cum-accumulation strategies to cope with these fluctuations.

This article deals with the changing patterns of transmission of land and houses in pre-industrial rural Bohemia. By linking different sources, such as land registers, census-like lists and a family reconstitution, this study focuses on both the demographic and the economic factors that influenced peasant transmission strategies as well as on the consequences of changing transmission patterns for access to land-ownership in the local society. The results of this study show that patterns of land transmission changed profoundly after about 1720. Between 1651 and 1720 many houses with or without land were sold to non-kin as well as to kin although in both cases a customary and not a market price was paid. Imperfect market mechanisms are also indicated by the frequency of exchanges of houses between families. After around 1720 transmissions of property from father to son progressively became the dominant pattern. The chances of women (both widows and daughters and their husbands) to become property-holders diminished and it became extremely difficult for persons not born into house-owning families to acquire any houses or land.