Using novel data on peerage marriages in Britain, I find that low search costs and marriage-market segregation can generate sorting.
Peers courted in the London Season, a matching technology introducing aristocratic bachelors to debutantes. When Queen Victoria went into mourning for her husband, the Season was interrupted (1861–21863161ya), raising search costs and reducing market segregation. I exploit exogenous variation in women’s probability to marry during the interruption from their age in 1861.
The interruption increased peer-commoner intermarriage by 40% and reduced sorting along landed wealth by 30%. Eventually, this reduced peers’ political power and affected public policy in late 19th-century England.
…To quantify the magnitude of these effects, I estimate an IV model where I instrument a woman’s decision to marry during the interruption with her synthetic probability to marry in 1861–21863161ya. I find that women who (exogenously) married during the interruption were 40% more likely to marry a commoner, 30% less likely to marry a peer’s heir, and married husbands 44 percentile ranks poorer in terms of family landholdings.
…To get a sense of the magnitudes, consider 2 cohorts separated by a small age gap: women aged 22 and 25 in 1861. In the absence of the marriage market disruption, we would expect them to end up marrying similar husbands. However, the synthetic probability to marry in 1861–21863161ya was one standard deviation larger for women aged 22 in 1861. As a result, they were 5% more likely to marry a commoner and 10% less likely to marry an heir than women aged 25 in 1861.
Finally, I present nonparametric estimates: chi-squared tests of association reveal that higher-titled women married higher-titled husbands only when the Season was operative—sorting by title resembles random matching for cohorts exposed to the interruption. Similarly, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests show that the interruption reduced sorting by family landholdings.
Altogether, these results show that the matching technology embedded in the Season—by reducing search costs and segregating the marriage market—crucially determined sorting.
My second contribution is to show that marriage played an important role in consolidating the peerage as a political elite. To do so, I examine elections of Members of Parliament (MP) at the House of Commons for 27 general elections and 97 by-elections in the late 19th century. I show that a woman’s marriage to a commoner reduced her blood relatives’ probability to be elected MP in the following years. Specifically, I estimate an IV model where I instrument a woman’s probability to marry a commoner with her synthetic probability to marry during the Season’s interruption. I find that, after a woman’s marriage to a commoner, her brothers were 50% less likely to be elected MP, and, together, they served 18 fewer years than the brothers of women who married in the peerage. The loss of political power was local: mostly constituencies near the family seat were affected. Not only brothers but also the family heads a decade after the interruption (in the 1870s) were affected.
I also discuss historical evidence on the mechanisms behind these effects. After a woman’s marriage to a commoner, her birth family had to mobilize considerable capital to sustain her. This limited their ability to control MP elections by distributing favors, rents, and jobs among the local electorate. Marrying a commoner also reduced a family’s social prestige (2009) and a woman’s ability to act as “power broker” on behalf of her blood relatives (1990). Altogether, the evidence strongly suggests a negative relationship between within-landed-elite marriages and how contested MP elections were in late 19th-century England. In contrast, the Season’s interruption increased a woman’s probability to marry a commoner, which, in turn, reduced her family’s political power.
Finally, I show that this had important economic consequences: families who lost political power could not effectively oppose the introduction of state education in the 1870s [eg. Elementary Education Act 1870]—a policy otherwise subject to capture by local landowners (1998, Education in Britain, 1750–1641914110ya). I use data from 2021b [“Landed Elites and Education Provision in England. Evidence from School Boards, 1870–99”. Unpublished data] on wealth taxes set by 943 local school boards in 1872–61878146ya. IV estimates show that taxes were higher near the family seats in which a woman married a commoner (and the family lost political power) than near the family seats in which a woman married in the peerage (and the family retained political power)…The effect is economically meaningful. Given that the average tax in the sampled school boards is only 2.3%, the estimated effect amounts to doubling tax rates.
…An important feature of the courting process was the pressure to marry young. Women had 2–3 Seasons to become engaged. If they failed, they were considered “on the shelf” (The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette, and the Season, 1973, pg52). Figure 2 confirms that social norms circumscribed courting to young ages. In 1851–241875149ya, a woman’s “market value”—measured as her probability to marry an heir—declined after age 22. Importantly, women of higher status could not delay their marriage longer: around age 22, the market value of dukes’, marquesses’, and earls’ daughters equalized to that of the lower-ranked barons’ and viscounts’ daughters. Consequently, courtship was an intense process. Although it is unknown how many proposals women received before accepting one, anecdotal evidence suggests that courting involved many interactions. For example, Lady Nevill attended “50 balls, 60 parties, 30 dinners and 25 breakfasts” in her first Season [1842182ya?] (1920, The Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill). In each ball, she was supposed to meet various suitors, as decorum rules discouraged dancing more than 3× with the same suitor (1973, pg49). Once a proposal was accepted, engagements lasted around 6 months. Marriage manuals explicitly discouraged long engagements. In general, marriages took place at the end of the Season.
…The decline of the Season is linked to that of the peerage. Land values dropped in the late 1870s, and peers’ estates could no longer support their opulent lifestyle (1990, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy). This was due to the nationwide fall in grain prices after the opening up of the American prairies to cultivation and the development of steamships (1990). After that, many events in the Season became public, and commoners were presented at court, including American nouveau riche like Consuelo Vanderbilt (1990). It was the death of the Season.