Regional standardization in the age at marriage

Age at marriage is an important issue in family, population, and socioeconomic history as well as in cultural anthropology. In preindustrial Japan, regional differences in inheritance customs determined the regional diversity of marriage patterns. The age at marriage in preindustrial Germany also showed a regional diversity, but compared to Japan, it was standardized within the European marriage pattern. The author contends that there were two different patterns of standardization in marriage behavior in Germany, one being the historical consequence of official institutionalization and the other occurring as a process on a macroeconomic level and resulting in a concentration of age at marriage around a mean age. The distribution of the ages at marriage and its historical change in this context is an important variable for the analysis of marriage behavior.