Marriage Networks and Social Integration: How Industrial Transformation Reshaped American Society

Sam Hwang, University of British Columbia
Munir Squires, University of British Columbia

This paper introduces the concept of marital distance, a network-based measure of social integration that quantifies the social distance between spouses. Using genealogical records covering 40 million Americans from 1750-1950, we document that approximately 95% of spouses were already connected through some path in the extended family network before marriage. Marital distance increased substantially from an average of about 10 steps in 1750 to 16 steps by 1950, with the sharpest rise coinciding with the period of intensive industrialization (1870-1915). Throughout this period, individuals consistently married closer in the network than would occur under random matching within the same county, though this gap narrowed considerably over time, particularly during intensive industrialization (1870-1915). These patterns exhibited substantial geographic variation, with the South maintaining shorter marital distances compared to the North and West. County-level analysis reveals that areas with higher manufacturing employment experienced greater increases in marital distance, while individual-level evidence with sibling fixed effects demonstrates that men who married more distant spouses were significantly more likely to move away from their birthplace, transition out of farming, and enter white-collar occupations. These findings provide novel empirical evidence that economic modernization fundamentally reshaped American society by expanding marriage connections beyond traditional community boundaries toward more open, interconnected systems.

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 Presented in Session 154. Mobility, Networks, and Housing