Family Types and the Persistence of Regional Disparities in Europe

This article examines the association between one of the most basic institutional forms, the family, and a series of demographic, educational, social, and economic indicators across regions in Europe. Using Emmanuel Todd's classification of medieval European family systems, we identify potential links between family types and regional disparities in household size, educational attainment, social capital, labor participation, sectoral structure, wealth, and inequality. The results indicate that medieval family structures seem to have influenced European regional disparities in virtually every indicator that we considered. That these links remain, despite the influence of the modern state and population migration, suggests that such structures are either extremely resilient or in the past were internalized within other social and economic institutions as they developed.