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Inheritance Laws Across Colonies: Causes and Consequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Lee J. Alston  and
Morton Owen Schapiro
Lee J. Alston
Affiliation:
Assistant Professors of Economics, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267
Morton Owen Schapiro
Affiliation:
Assistant Professors of Economics, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts 01267
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Abstract

We examine in this paper both the causes and consequences of inheritance laws in the colonies. We argue that the continuation of intestate inheritance laws over the colonial period was due in part to their compatibility with economic efficiency. In the North, multigeniture helped motivate family labor, whereas the passive acceptance of the British inheritance system of primogeniture in the South rested on its promotion of large plantations that could capture economies of scale. In terms of effects, a strong bequest motive in the colonies adopting multigeniture reduced the variability in demographic experiences across colonies with different inheritance systems.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 277 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

1 A noteworthy exception, discussing in detail colonists' rights in land, is Ch. 6, “Planting the Tenures and Inheritance,” Hughes, Jonathan R. T., Social Control in the Colonial Economy (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1976).Google Scholar

2 Widows had “dower” rights that provided them with a certain portion of land (often one-third of the landed estate), which they could neither give away nor sell. In much of the country, a husband could not eliminate dower rights by selling or giving away his land.Google Scholar

3 This can be contrasted with the experience of England where, in the event of intestacy, descent to the eldest son lasted until 1926.Google Scholar

4 For the former, see Haskins, George L., “The Beginnings of Partible Inheritance in the American Colonies,” The Yale Law Journal, 51 (05 1941–1942), 1280–1315;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hughes, Social Control, and Morris, “Primogeniture,” For explanations based on an economic rationale, see Friedman, Lawrence M., A History of American Law (New York, 1973),Google ScholarGreven, Philip J. Jr, Four Generations (Ithaca, 1970),Google Scholar and Harris, Marshall, Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States (Ames, 1953).Google Scholar

5 See Haskins, “The Beginnings,” and Harris, Origin.Google Scholar

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9 See Eckenrode, H. J., The Revolution in Virginia (Boston, 1916);Google ScholarNevins, Allan, The American States During and After the Revolution, 1775–1789 (New York, 1924), pp. 442–43;Google Scholar and Lingley, Charles Ramsdell, The Transition in Virginia from Colony to Commonwealth (New York, 1910).Google Scholar

10 Numerous scholars have pointed to the association between plantations and primogeniture. See, for example, Haskins, “The Beginnings,” Gray, Lewis C., History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Boston, Massachusetts, reprinted 1958), Friedman, A History, and Harris, Origin. Simply letting the analysis stand with the association between plantations and primogeniture, however, begs the question of why the plantation system was prevalent in the South and not in the North. We are also not the first to recognize the comparative advantage in monitoring slaves in labor-intensive crops. See especially Gray, History of Agriculture, pp. 458, 463, 469, and 478–480. Yet, no one appears to have linked slave supervision costs to the maintenance of primogeniture.Google Scholar

11 See Alston, Lee J., “Tenure Choice in Southern Agriculture, 1930–1960,” Explorations in Economic History, 18 (07, 1981). 211–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Alston, Lee J. and Higgs, Robert, “Contractual Mix in Southern Agriculture since the Civil War: Facts. Hypotheses, and Tests,” this Journal, 42 (06 1982), 327–53. for tests of the importance of labor supervision costs in determining contractural mix in Southern agriculture after the Civil War.Google Scholar

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17 It appears that the manors that succeeded the patroonships similarly relied on nonfamily labor.Google Scholar

18 See Morris, “Primogeniture,” p. 78.Google Scholar

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20 Channing, Edward, “The Narragansett Planters,” in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 4 (Baltimore, 1896).Google Scholar

21 See Habakkuk, H. J., “Family Structure and Economic Change in 19th Century Europe,” this Journal, 15 (03. 1955), 1–12, for a particularly valuable discussion of demographic effects of inheritance practices.Google Scholar

22 This is the basis of Easterlin's, Richard A., “Population Change and Farm Settlement in the Northern United States,” this Journal, 36 (03. 1976), 45–75, bequest model. He argues that this was the prevailing practice in the North. We suggest that the existence of a bequest motive was facilitated by the availability of economic opportunities off the farm.Google Scholar

23 Efficient farm size is generally associated with impartibility of land. Partibility, however, would occur if family farms were large enough to subdivide into smaller yet still efficient size farms.Google Scholar

24 This hypothesis provides a possible rationale for the success of land availability measures in accounting for the cross-sectional and time-series variation in U.S. birth rates. See Schapiro, Morton Owen, “Land Availability and Fertility in the United States, 1760–1870,” this Journal, 42 (09 1982), 577–600.Google ScholarPubMed The notion that land scarcity may create pressure to limit fertility is consistent with Le Play's, FredericL'Organization de la Famille (Paris, 1871) analysis of the decline in birth rates in nineteenth-century France. He argues that parents wanted to maintain a system of impartibility but were forced into partibility by the Civil Code. The result was a decline in birth rates in order to minimize the division of farmland.Google Scholar

25 Greven, Four Generations.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 224.

27 Tracy, Patricia J., Jonathan Edwards, Pastor: Religion and Society in Eighteenth Century Northampton (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 102.

29 Our land availability measure is the ratio of rural population at time t to the maximum rural population reached when rural population initially peaked. See Schapiro, “Land Availability,” for a more complete description of this land availability proxy.Google Scholar

30 We are presently extending our research to include regression analysis to differentiate statistically among the various factors hypothesized to influence population growth. In this way we will be able to assess more rigorously the importance of inheritance laws.Google Scholar